


You Feelin' It Now (Cause I Am)

by ShadowsLament



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Filicide, M/M, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-25 14:17:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsLament/pseuds/ShadowsLament
Summary: Determined to make things right for two ghosts, a young boy and girl harmed by someone close to them, Klaus and Diego must also confront what—and how much—they mean to each other.





	You Feelin' It Now (Cause I Am)

Both of the windows in Diego’s old room were more grime than glass, the late afternoon sun’s light barely penetrating, casting a few dull scraps down to the floor. Crossing over the threshold, moving deeper into the room, Diego noticed the shadow on the bed didn’t stir. No, Klaus held himself close, that patchwork coat of his pulled tight as a straitjacket across his chest. 

His brother’s eyes might’ve been closed, but it was a lie, proven when Klaus muttered, “Somnophiliac tendencies, Diego? Had I known, I would’ve taken off the coat. And everything else.”

“Shut up,” Diego said, reflexively, without heat. Near the end of the bed, he considered Klaus’ bare feet on the mattress, all ten toenails coated in a black as glossy as the strips of leather Klaus wore like pants. The coat covered the slight angle of his knees, the jut of a diamond-cut hipbone. Fur trim trailed down Klaus’ abdomen, but where it gathered around the collar, where it had been sharpened by sweat, the fur looked more like bladed feathers. Klaus was there, in Diego’s bed, while somewhere out in the world there was an unkindness of ravens missing one of its own. “Why are you here?”

Klaus might have shrugged. All Diego saw were ruffled feathers.

“Why not here?”

“Your room has a bed. Allison’s has—“

“A bed that smells like Luther. And lube. And I found a delightful box in the bottom drawer of her dresser,” Klaus said, “that contained possibly the largest dildo I have ever clapped eyes on. Five bucks says she used it to peg—“

“That’s it,” Diego took hold of Klaus’ ankle, tugged, “get out.”

Even as Klaus’ body stretched into a rigid line of refusal, unforgiving as rigor, his eyelashes beat and beat like a pair of damned wings. “Let me stay. Diego,” Klaus’ voice was glass, thinned out to the point of fracture, “I’ll keep quiet. I’ll try to, really.”

Circling his thumb around the peak of Klaus’ ankle bone, Diego kept the touch light, kept the movement slow. It would register on Klaus’ skin as a vague impression, and if Diego didn’t concentrate on that skin, smoother than the baby blue sheet beneath it, he could go on thinking the action was idle. Whatever it was that pushed Klaus towards Diego’s room was impossible to ignore, lingering as it was in the tremble of his mouth, those gloss-slick lips trying to shape a smile, and failing.

Unlikely as the terms were, Diego agreed with a brief nod. “You do that.”

He made the floor his seat, the bed his backrest, shifted over so the tips of Klaus’ fingers could find his shoulder. Back when they were kids, Klaus knew he couldn’t blacken Diego’s walls with the laments he heard day in and day out till he started using, but he’d learned he could scribble them across Diego’s nape, his cotton-covered shoulder, with impunity. Long nights bled into hazy mornings with Klaus’ index finger still trailing down Diego’s biceps, sentences tangling up and breaking off in the bend of his elbow. No matter how hard he looked, if he squinted or what, Diego never saw a trace of the crowd that must’ve followed Klaus down the hall.

Klaus never offered, and Diego never asked about the stories unfolding on his body.

As he sat there, ten minutes seemed to crawl across the room, followed by another five carrying the weight of an hour. Klaus didn’t so much as mumble or even move, didn’t cause the blanket and sheets to whisper one to the other. The silence was—Diego cleared his throat. “What happened?”

Sighing, Klaus addressed the ceiling. “I burned the pancakes.”

Diego frowned. “Burned the—”

“Pancakes. I was making you pancakes and—“

“You were making me pancakes?”

“Did you smuggle in a parrot? Is it under here?” Klaus dipped his head to look beneath the bed. His put-on pout was accompanied by a breath like a warm gust, a soft breeze across the back of Diego’s hand where it splayed over a narrow floorboard. “You know we’re not allowed to keep pets, and if we were and you didn’t get me a puppy that’s sloe-eyed like you, that’s just—“

“Why were you making me pancakes?”

“Well,” Klaus lifted his head to meet Diego’s pinched stare, “to show you I could, of course.” His voice might’ve been glass before, but his laugh was like a shattering, like the chime of shards colliding. “Except, as it turns out, I can’t.” 

His brother wasn’t playing, Diego realized. And if he was wrong about that, if the man watching him with an odd, out of proportion shade of sorrow and apology dimming his eyes was actually knee-deep in some new game—“Don’t worry about it,” Diego hesitated to look away, to look at anything else, “I’m not hungry.” 

Klaus pushed up on an elbow. Displaced strands of fur feathered across his lips, came away from the encounter wet, gleaming in spite of the low light. “You’re not? I’m famished.”

Never one for three squares a day, Klaus tended to graze or gorge at random, and Diego hadn’t seen him do much of either since their return to the Academy. “Is there anything left of the ingredients?”

Eyebrows arching in apparent hope or surprise, Klaus nodded.

“C’mon then.” On his feet, Diego offered his hand to Klaus. When his brother’s long, slim fingers slid up Diego’s palm to circle his wrist, the shock he felt had nothing to do with static. Diego hoisted Klaus up from the bed, quickly. “You eat whatever I make, got it?”

“Feed me anything you want,” Klaus said, soft and low, following Diego down the hallway, the stairs, “I’ll swallow all of it down, Diego, every last—”

“Hey,” Diego tossed the hoarse word over his shoulder, his grip on the banister bruising, “let’s get back to that quiet you promised me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

When they got there, a single glance at the kitchen proved Klaus hadn’t been lying. 

The table was clothed in the fine white of scattered flour, salt and sugar granules glinting in the mix. Boxes of baking powder and baking soda tipped towards the sink, while a cardboard carton of eggs stood open and too close to a gas burner for comfort. Klaus had cut once-cold butter into slim pads, left them to melt on a chipped plate next to an uncapped bottle of vanilla extract and a stray tea bag. Batter-splattered bowls sat on chairs, perched on top of the fridge, one was even stuck between poles on the foosball table. Walking into the room, Diego’s wide eyes snagged on the matte black handle of a skillet poking up from the trash.

“What the—“

“I know. I know. It looks bad, doesn’t it.” Klaus ambled over to fiddle with the radio’s dials, turning one to the left, then the right, back and forth, back and forth, like a hypnotist trying to mesmerize himself. “In my defense,” he said into the muted microphone he’d picked up, “the alleyways I could afford didn’t come equipped with stoves. Sure, there was the occasional combo deal thrown in, a stove and oven set left in front of a dumpster or what have you, but it was always so small. And made of plastic. Between you and me, those things weren’t at all suited to picking up even the basics of cooking. The people at Fisher-Price are shysters. They’re all lying liars who should be deeply ashamed of themselves.”

Diego blinked. He opened his mouth, but all that came out was an exhale, long and heavy and hitched.

“Oh, that can’t be good.” Klaus shuffled closer, plucking at the fur on his coat. “All the messes I’ve made and this is the one that breaks you? Shit. How am I going to explain this to Lu—“

“He-help m-me—“ Diego stopped, shut his eyes. But that, that was exactly the wrong move. A mistake. In the superficial darkness he could make out brick walls tagged with nonsensical neon graffiti and streams of drying piss, a rug woven out of labels peeled off empty bottles of booze and plastic baggies minus the pills, saw Klaus flat on his back on a cigarette-burned couch with a—“C-clean this up.”

He stalked over to the trash, yanked out the skillet to shove it in the sink. The drain was clogged with powder in clay-like clumps, the basin littered with more dirty spoons than Diego was willing to count. He let Klaus have the trash when his brother gently tugged on the barrel, listened to him hustle over to the table, thump a cupped hand down on the wood. Each swipe across the surface was a murmur urging the flour, sugar and salt into the trash bag.

Righting boxes, judging what was left inside each and if it would be enough for even one more batch, Diego rolled his shoulders. Knotted muscles incrementally loosened, eased entirely when Klaus began to hum. Peripherally, Diego kept tabs on him as he swayed with the barrel held against his chest, chucking in crumpled napkins and mangled bananas. The tea bag’s string somehow wound around one finger and wouldn’t be shaken off, though Klaus tried, repeatedly, and got smacked on the cheek for his trouble.

“Goddamnit,” Klaus whispered to himself or the tea bag, “what’re you even doing out here? No one asked for tea.”

“No one asked for pancakes either,” Diego said, his grin slight but undeniably there. He went and found a clean bowl and pan, crossed to the fridge for unspoiled butter, the milk. “But here we are.”

“I know you didn’t, but…”

Diego glanced back. “What?”

“You looked sad. Earlier.” Klaus put down the trash barrel, and with the string still wrapped around his finger, came to stand beside Diego. Their shoulders brushed, suede rasping against wool, before Klaus leaned into him. “I guess I thought pancakes would cheer you up. Like they used to.”

A nod toward the handful of blueberries staining the bottom of their container, then, “You were gonna make the smiley faces?”

Klaus’ eyes impossibly brightened. “Yeah. Yes. For you? Of course.”

“Okay if I still leave that part to you?” Intent on the smile that shifted the balance of his brother’s features from pretty to unearthly, Diego heard Klaus’ assenting hum from a tunneled distance. He swallowed, turning his head, maybe looking for a clean spoon or spatula, and finally stepped aside to make good on finding one. With several generous inches of space between them, Diego didn’t need to look to confirm how closely Klaus watched him.

After the dry ingredients had been measured, the milk and egg folded in, Diego shrugged. “I wasn’t.” 

If Klaus was as aware of the step he took to cut down on the distance between them as Diego was, his expression didn’t betray him. “Huh?”

“I wasn’t sad.” Lightly slapping Klaus’ hand, the back of it, before quick, tricky fingers could lift out a taste of the batter coming together in the bowl, Diego added, “Preoccupied, yeah, but not sad.”

A deep crease pressed between Klaus’ brows as he worried his thumbnail against the string coiled around his finger. 

Diego studied the still and silent creature standing in front of the sink. He waited. For Klaus to question him; to pull out some line like a silk veil and slide it along Diego’s nerves until he bit out a response. He waited for his talkative brother to say _something_. A single word. When Klaus’ mouth remained pursed, sealed, when his hyper focus remained fastened to that fucking string, with its fluttering paper tag, Diego left the pan on a cold burner. Relinquished what was left of his self-imposed distance.

With Klaus’ wrist cradled in his left hand, Diego drew the pad of his right index finger over the curled line of each of his brother’s, one by one. He swallowed a soft, inexplicable sound when Klaus’ hand opened to him. Sunlight streamed into Klaus’ inked palm, pale and skin-warm, as Diego spent a second on steadying that swaying tag. 

He took his time with the unwinding, and Diego knew Klaus watched, too, as the string came loose, came undone, dripped between their fingers.

“With what?”

Klaus' hushed question was as good as a folded knuckle beneath Diego's chin, urging his head up. Between one quickening heartbeat and the next, Klaus' Eden-green eyes lowered, lingered over the peaks, on the curve, of Diego's lips. 

"Wh-what?"

"I'm going to tiptoe out on a limb here," Klaus murmured, "so do stop me if—By preoccupied you—You were thinking about leaving. The Academy, and...Well." His slight shrug sent a bit of fur into stilted flight. "Yes?" Long fingers shook some, and curled inward, retracting the greeting on Klaus' palm. "No? Do tell, brother mine.”

It wasn’t much, his room back at the gym, Diego knew that. But he could also count on one hand the things that were solely his, that had absolutely nothing to do with his family’s fractured legacy, and so, yeah, he’d—

Klaus abruptly gestured to the poster pinned to the wall above the sink. “Was it daddy dearest, do you think, who put all of these fucking cows and goats in here?” Slipping his hand out from Diego’s grip, Klaus tucked it behind his back. “Butchery. Kitchen. Spot the difference.”

Holding the lapels of his coat closed, Klaus backed up a step. 

Then another.

Diego frowned, moved to follow. He faltered when Klaus shook his head. “What about—“

“Sincerest apologies,” Klaus said, quietly, before passing through the doorway, “but it seems I’ve gone and lost my appetite entirely.”

* * *

“What’s happening right now?”

Ignoring Ben in favor of folding in on himself a little tighter, Klaus traced over the words on the wall by his bed. He remembered writing until his hand cramped, one acrostic poem after another, variations on a theme, but always, always informed by the same five letters. He’d doodled around the lines, daisies and dead eyes, and no one had noticed the pattern. Not even—

One of the looser floorboards on the other side of his locked door heaved, settled with a groan beneath someone’s heel. “Klaus?”

They had barely lived in the pauses between training and lessons and missions, all of them twisting up, turning on each other, never trying all that hard to play at being friends. What would have been the point? It wasn’t like good old Sir Cloven Foot had ever encouraged them to get along, or to share, to be siblings first and his warped version of super-fucking-heroes second. Secret handshakes were glared at until clenched fists shoved inside uniform pockets; the merest mention of starting a band was nixed with the downward turn of their father’s thin lips. Not a single silly, hastily scrawled note had ever passed between them. They wouldn’t dare, too afraid of being caught out, exposed or ridiculed.

Diego’s voice, soft and uncertain, slipping like a piece of paper through the slim crack between the door and its frame, was at least a decade late. 

Pressing his palm flat over a strong D and sloped I, Klaus left his own name where it fell.

Ben snapped his fingers. “Answer him.”

Klaus groped for a pen, came away with a pencil that might have been gnawed on by a tenacious dog or a teenaged boy who hadn’t made even the slightest attempt to curb a burgeoning oral fixation. Lead smeared down the heel of his hand, but he didn’t stop to wipe it off or consider what formed beneath it: dog tags or a knife’s blade. He kept sketching, scratching away at the paint, and snuffed out the urge to sigh.

“Klaus,” Diego tried again, firmer. For a few flickering seconds Klaus wondered if his brother’s hand was fisted by his side or hovering over the dull brass door knob. “Talk to me.”

“Okay, I’ll repeat myself. What the fuck is happening right now?” Ben needlessly pointed at the door. “That’s _Diego_. Shouldn’t you be lapping up his at—“

The flat, corpse-cold stare Klaus turned on Ben transformed his brother’s sudden silence into its own darling creature, one with a throat that could apparently choke on words and the oh-so precious air Number Six no longer needed. Klaus had perfected that little look shortly after his towel-clad ass was unceremoniously dumped in ’67. Sobriety may have come with so many sticky strings, with rules that chafed and itched, but if Klaus was of a mind to wield it, it also came with a steel edge. A few months in, as exploded shells rocked the ground beneath his feet, tucked away in Dave’s delightfully scuffed boots, Klaus settled down on one of the godawful cots in their darkened US military issue tent, determined to sharpen that edge to resemble the bayonet on the M7 shoved into his shaking hands.  
   
Arms crossed, darting sideways glances at the door, Ben moved off to a corner. Kept his mouth shut, so there was that, Klaus thought, proof of time well spent.

Several near-silent minutes later, they both heard Diego’s leashed, “Fine,” punctuated by the floorboard’s relieved gasp when his weight shifted and released. 

His lungs compressed as Klaus waited, steadily strangling the pencil all the while, but Diego didn’t swing back for another run. “Okay,” he said, rapping a knuckle against the wall. “Great. That’s great.”

“No,” Ben intoned from his corner of the room, “not great.”

“What do you know?”

“What do I know—“

“Why do you people keep repeating everything I say?”

Ben’s eyebrow cocked. “You people?”

“My god, Ben, why would you do that? And while I’m in this frankly fragile state.” Klaus sniffed. “Twelve out of ten doctors would say—“ 

“That you’re being an idiot,” Ben said. “Some diagnosis don’t require an MD, Klaus.” Leaving his post, Ben returned to the bed, sat down on a sheer button-up Klaus had nicked from Allison’s suitcase. “Tell me.”

The sheets had churned into a tempest overnight; as distractions went, chasing the pencil’s dulled tip around and around each fold was—

“ _Klaus_.” 

“ _Geez_ , give me a minute, will you, I’m trying to get a bunch of metaphorical ducks to stand in a single row. Can you even imagine how difficult that is?” Glutting himself on cool, sugar-sweet air, Klaus balanced his gaze on the bend of one knee. Absently, he coaxed a loose thread out from the blanket’s hem. “I think they might be afraid of me now. Or disgusted, but in a bright and shiny new way. Luther and Allison, I mean, and just a…a little bit.” The thread wrapped easily around his index and middle fingers, but without Diego there to—“Five looks at me and pulls on a white lab coat. Not a real one, obviously, because do they even stock those in the kids’ section? And Vanya, she…I—Christ, Ben,” Klaus breathed, fatigue suddenly overtaking his tone, weighing it down, “all of this soul baring can’t be good for the liver. We should stop now, pick it up after the next apocalypse. What do you say?”

Ben crossed his incorporeal arms. Again. “Diego?”

Klaus solemnly nodded. “Yes.” 

“Will you stop—“

“Talking? I thought you’d never ask.”

With that, Klaus turned to brace his forehead against the wall. Eyes closed, he drew circles like ouroboros, each one darker, larger, than the last. The pencil snickered on every pass, and Klaus dug in, bore down, turning up the volume on each revolution until Ben’s voice was no more distinct than music playing in a room several closed doors down a long hotel corridor.

Eventually, his fingers spasmed. His wrist bitched about awkward angles, started to throb, and throb, and _ow, fuck_ —Klaus pulled back in a daze, shaking out his hand, the drawing registering as one more shadow lining the walls.

“Welcome back.” Ben stood near the window, draped in the watercolor shades of early evening. “They’re having dinner now,” he explained when Klaus blinked. “Luther knocked.”

“Did he? How surprisingly inclusive of him.”

Klaus stumbled to stand and turned a lame semi-circle in the center of his room, all of the things he owned or stole strewn around, loitering on every surface and in every pocket. There to trip him up or turn him out in black leather, scraps of lace, slim-fitting cropped cotton. Miles of scarves that worked with headboards but not as nooses. Sneakers that had walked through the end of the world; that had kicked loose rocks at debris stacked tight and deep as the dead. Eyeliner pencils in colors that mimicked midnight to four in the morning, those unseen hours like bruises, blooming and fading. Knitting needles. Yarn. Silver and clay teapots. Fancy-pants lighters, bent matchbooks, crushed cigarette boxes sporting a phone number or two. 

Every fucking thing he didn’t want or need within arm’s reach. 

Klaus stepped over the patchwork coat he’d thrown to the dust bunnies on the floor, opened the door, waving off Ben when he asked, “Where are you going?”

Aside from escaping the chill that chased through the goosebumps on his bare arms, there was no reason to slink so quickly down the hall, and still Klaus all but dove through Diego’s bedroom door. Grabbed what he went in for and got out.

“Why go into stealth mode to get it if you’re just going to wear it down to dinner?”

Voice muffled by Diego’s sweater, pulled halfway over his head, Klaus asked, “Ever heard of the Geneva Conventions, Ben?”

Fingers twitching like he was nudging puzzle pieces around, testing the fit and taking nothing away from the process except frustration, Ben offered a wary, “Yes?”

“Oh, goody.” Klaus walked faster, yanking on each warm woolen sleeve until it covered the knuckles on either hand. “It’s nice, don’t you think, that one of us has.” Easing into the kitchen, taking the seat across from Diego, Klaus jerked a thumb in Five’s direction. “One of us and him. Odds are our very own Number Five has flouted every article over the course of his long and storied life.”

Allison handed over a paper plate bearing a large and drooping slice of pizza. “Flouted what?”

“Ben’s got a hard-on for the Geneva Conventions all of a sudden, won’t stop yammering on about wounded soldiers. Or was it shipwrecked sailors? Jesus,” Klaus said, eyeing the grease-stained boxes piled high at one end of the table, “do we only eat round, flat food covered in extraneous toppings in this house now? Is this a thing we’ve all committed to?”

“We’ve got cookies for dessert. So,” Vanya shrugged, smiled, “yeah, it seems we have.”

“If you’d answered when I knocked,” Luther said around an alarming mouthful of crust, “you could’ve had a—“

Droning on about choices and options, like Klaus gave a rat’s ass about the kind of takeout he pushed around his plate most nights, Luther took no notice of the cheese he wore like some kind of gaudy broach on the lapel of that overcoat of his. Grossly fascinating as it was, Klaus let his gaze roam over to the spotless stove and sink, all along the counter Diego must’ve scrubbed after clearing away the remains of the afternoon. Everything but the—Klaus squinted, honing in on the tea bag, there towards the back, practically propped against the wall, its string coiled and kinked near the tag.

“What’s wrong?” Ben asked, looking between Klaus and the counter.

Klaus shook his head, helpless to the chain reaction, the way the answer took his body over like a shiver. Like a lie.

Burrowing down into Diego’s sweater, his siblings’ conversations seemed to move in waves, rolling into and retreating away from Klaus’ awareness. He drifted in the white noise, that lovely idle space, brushing his nose over a small hole near the shoulder seam. Between the open boxes of pizza, and Allison’s perfume, and Five’s three full cups of coffee spread out equidistantly from elbow to elbow, the scents woven through the threads along the sweater’s collar were as impossible to hold onto as the man whose skin would smell just the same.

Klaus breathed in deeply anyway, once and then again, and when he could no longer bear it, when he finally lifted his head, Diego’s gorgeous gaze didn’t waver. He looked across the table with those eyes that had always been Klaus’ only real understanding of home, and mouthed, “You good?”

In lieu of an actual, rational response, a manic hand popped a bit of laughter onto Klaus’ tongue. He swallowed it back as fast as he would down any pill, possibly faster, and tried to suffocate the stupid fucking _unreasonable_ compulsion with water from Diego’s glass. 

_So much water_ , Klaus thought a second later, spluttering, rapidly blinking back tears, _too quick, too quick_. 

He coughed, and it was an abrasive, ricocheting sound that sliced through every other conversation, drawing the unwanted attention of everyone at the table. Klaus thumped his chest, hard. Rubbed rough geometric patterns against his breastbone. The violence might’ve been slight, artistic even, but it only served to incite the cough into throwing a more insistent fit.

“Klaus, are you—“

“He’s choking, someone—“

“That’s not choking, Luther, for Christ’s sake, learn—“

Klaus wheezed, “M’fine,” and sent his chair clattering to the floor as he stood. With a sloppy wave, the ink on his left palm reinforcing the message, Klaus skittered from the room.

He was all too well aware of the two brothers who chose to follow him out and up the stairs.

"You don’t have to talk," Ben murmured, keeping pace at Klaus' elbow, "but don’t shut him out.”

Following Klaus inside his bedroom, it was Diego who closed the door, shuttering them both in the moonlit dark.

"I don’t know what that was, and I’m not going to ask," Diego said, "but whatever’s going on, Klaus, I’m here. Okay? Right here.”

Klaus bit down on bitter questions, on accusations he had no right to make, and replaced them with a tired, “Sure."

Over Diego’s shoulder, a cluster of unfamiliar faces peered at Klaus, all of them with blood like lipstick on the corners of their mouths and cheeks, sadistic kisses left on foreheads and temples. He closed his eyes rather than fill in the outline of those damaged bodies, and realized his own wasn’t frozen or even cold. A reprieve, a glorious minor miracle, one that had always—for as long as Klaus could remember—been brought about by Diego: When he entered a room the air held a heated breath.

"How many of them?”

Later—perhaps never—Klaus would figure out what gave it away. In that moment, he opened his eyes, clung to the sight of Diego’s scar. "Oh, a few.”

“Where?"

"Behind you," Klaus said, voice a rasp, raw, "lined up in a gory little row.”

"Then look at me." Heedless of the obstacles on the floor, Diego stepped forward. "Just at me, Klaus.” Long, callused, deft fingers grazed Klaus’ throat. Diego’s palm sealed over Klaus’ nape, and then he leaned in. “What can I do?”

Klaus licked his lips. “I…” Diego’s eyes widened as he waited, every strong and steady inch of him willing, so fucking determined to be the immovable object between Klaus and the encroaching underworld.  _Christ_ , it was—Klaus looked away, a smidge to the right, his heartbeat recoiling when he noticed the new face, a boy with a deep red Glasgow smile and skinned knees. The small spirit stood beside them, watching intently. “ _Sh-shit_.”

“Hey, hey,” Diego said, “look at me. Tell me why my name is on your wall.”

Klaus’ attention snapped back to his brother. “What?“

“It’s a kind of poetry, right?” The hand on Klaus’ nape tightened, relaxed, rhythmic as an ocean’s tide, or current, whichever it was. Diego’s thumb circled and circled and soothed skin half-hidden by curls. “I always thought you were scribbling down what you heard. That you were trying to get it out of your head.”

“I, ah, yeah, I did some of that too.” It was a mistake, shifting his sightline to pick out an example. The boy had moved and brought a friend, a girl, with him. Ash-haired and cadaver-thin, her cheeks were studded with bleached bone shards that winked like diamonds, an awful, sickening parody of piercings. She was no more than—“Eleven,” Klaus absently, quietly guessed, “or twelve?”

“Kids,” Diego said, “you’re seeing kids right now?”

“A boy,” Klaus confirmed, “and a girl.“

“Do they—what do they want?”

“I don’t know.” That was it, all he had left, the admission relieving Klaus of the very last energy reserve he possessed. Swaying in place, Klaus felt Diego’s hand shift and lower, and let himself be gathered in and held close, let his head rest on a broad shoulder. “Someone shattered their faces,” Klaus whispered the words, trusting the curve of Diego’s neck to keep them like a horrible precious secret. “Maybe they can’t talk. They’re not speaking. Watching, just watching.” The harness strap beneath Klaus’ hand was smooth, supple leather, but he wanted fabric, wanted to clench something, anything, to stop his fingers from shaking. “I’m tired, Diego, you know? I’m exhausted, and they won’t go, not when I’m…”

“All right,” Diego’s hold tightened, “I’m beat too. Why don’t we get some sleep?”

A shudder wracked the curve of Klaus’ body. “They’re blocking the bed. I can’t,” he said, and then again, plaintively, “I can’t.”

“Fuck it, it’s not like our beds are much better than the floor.” Diego eased back, searched Klaus’ face. “Unless you wanna get out of here?”

Klaus shook his head, and caught the tail end of movement: the girl taking the boy’s wrist, tugging him down to sit beside her on Klaus’ mattress. “Not how it works,” he said, and chalked up the distant tremor in his voice to the matching blood stains on their shirts, to how very big the hand had been that held them down. "Never how it works.”

Their fingers were knotted together, Klaus saw, the girl’s knuckles as badly scuffed as the boy’s knees.

“Klaus, I need you to take a breath, okay, for me.” Diego thumbed something away from Klaus’ face, wicked it away from his cheek like it was water. “Breathe.” With Klaus’ jaw cradled in both of his hands, Diego demonstrated, his nostrils flaring, those lips that defined temptation parted, pulling in air that smelled like candy canes to Klaus. Or candy corn. Like a holiday he would fervently hate forevermore after he nailed down the goddamned scent. “I’ve got you,” Diego was saying, promised, “but maybe you could help me out, kneel with me?”

“I went to church once,” Klaus murmured, mesmerized by the kids’ spiked lashes, lowering and lowering as they tracked Klaus’ progress to the floor. “Exorcisms aren’t as much fun as you’d think. Rope burn for days, and I didn’t even come.”

“Holy-waterboarding not kinky enough for you?” Diego asked in a tight, strained tone, like each of the syllables he used came with its own price, and he went and willingly overpaid. His warmth withdrew, the kids and Klaus watching as Diego yanked a pillow down from the bed. “Mind if we share?”

“No,” Klaus said, his hipbone skidding, skipping like a stone on the driest land as he inched closer to Diego, “they don’t mind.” Diego’s arm blanketed his waist, and Klaus took it as his cue, tucking his head beneath Diego’s chin. Closing his eyes. “There’s another one on the bed they can use.”

“They’re making themselves comfortable?”

Klaus nodded, covered a jaw-cracking yawn against Diego’s chest, his hands unable to manage it, too full of Dave’s dog tags. “D’you know I lied to you, brother mine. In the…the car.” As sleep drew him down, peeled him away from any sense of reality, Klaus slurred the last thought to cross his mind, “Don’t go.”

* * *

“That’s the problem,” Luther said, transferring his glare from his stolen coffee cup in Five’s hand to Diego, “we don’t know it’s not a threat.”

Diego unclenched his jaw to bite out, “And I don’t need to be down here discussing a problem that might not be a problem.” When Luther had banged on Diego’s door, loud enough to have Klaus stirring in Diego’s arms, his hand had immediately gone for a blade, something to drop Luther’s fist before he could slam it against Klaus’ door next. Around one in the morning, careful to keep Klaus close and making damn sure his brother’s all-seeing eyes remained closed, Diego had taken the harness off and tossed it aside. Klaus’ mess swallowed it whole. Without a blade close to hand, he’d had to ease away, confront Luther in the hall, only to be told the world was ending. Again. Family meeting in ten. “Once you figure it out, then you come find—“

“Guten Morgen.” From the doorway, Klaus asked, “Can anyone join this clandestine meeting or is it invitation only? Password protected? Ask me for one, I know plenty. And in several languages to boot.”

Luther pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just sit down, Klaus.”

He'd changed into a different pair of second-skin pants, but Klaus hadn't swapped out Diego's sweater. No, Diego saw how he held onto it, clenching the material over his sternum, twisting it around the dog tags beneath. Advancing into the kitchen, Klaus' gaze didn't touch one of his siblings but kept flitting down to either side, like he was being flanked. 

_The kids_ , Diego thought, the boy and girl his brother had looked at with eyes like open wounds. He'd left Klaus to wake up to their shattered faces alone, and for what? More of Luther's fucking nonsense.

"Klaus." Diego waited until Klaus blinked the room into focus, looked over, to tilt his head towards the two remaining cups of coffee. "Get yours before Five finishes Luther's."

Diego shifted over some, made space for Klaus to slot in beside him. Standing hip to hip in front of the counter, Klaus' elbow brushed his on each pass, first for a spoon, then for more sugar packets than anyone else in the house used on any given day, never mind in one go. 

While Klaus sweetened his coffee to within an inch of its black, bitter life, Diego quietly said, "I was trying to get back up there. I wouldn't have left—"

"I know," Klaus kept his own volume down, "Ben was hovering nearby to engage in a little early morning eavesdropping. Another day, another urgent crisis according to the gospel of Luther, huh?”

Diego hesitated. "The kids, are they still—"

"Eerily silent and surprisingly sweet? Eyeing Number One contemptu—"

"Hey." Luther used that big fist again, knocking knuckles against the table, and Diego felt it, felt Klaus flinch in response. A small, sudden jerk that sent his coffee sloshing up to the cup's lip, had some spitting out onto the countertop. Before Klaus could do it, Diego grabbed a towel, cleaned up the spill to keep from turning on Luther. "Any time, you two."

"We're not exactly in a rush." Vanya leaned over the table towards Five. "Are we?"

"It pains me to admit that Diego has a point," Five said, popping the lid off Luther's cup and frowning down at what had to be the dregs, “but one half of a ripped-up note slipped under our front door by an unknown individual isn't exactly a reliable source of information."

"But you said—"

"I said it might be worth looking into. I haven't burned all of my connections, and it's possible one of them will be able to shed light on the matter."

"So that's what you'll be doing, but the rest of us shouldn't—What is he looking at?" Luther asked, waving one gloved hand like a fool, and apparently all for Klaus' benefit. "Is Ben here?"

Skimming his teeth along his pinkie finger, pulling at the bitten-red skin around the nail, Klaus hummed. His stare didn't budge from the open area between Luther and Allison.

Luther questioned Diego with a raised eyebrow. "Is that a yes?"

"You want to know, ask him. Nicely."

Klaus snorted, gestured in the general direction of the sofa. "Over there."

"Then what's right here?" Allison asked, pointing. Leaning away.

"Oxygen," Klaus said, lips curling, catching chaos in both corners, "nitrogen, carbon dioxide, a dash of—"

"Break out the periodic table and it's a party." Five's caustic tone was in no way a match for how he considered Klaus: closely, and if Diego wasn't too far off the mark, with something like sympathy. "Before we get carried away here, let's divvy up tasks, shall we?"

"Yes, I think—"

"Diego," Five cut clear through Luther's attempt to take point, "the residence across the street installed security cameras a week ago. Take Klaus, go over the footage from last night." 

Luther scoffed. “I can do that."

"You really can't," Five contradicted.

"Why not?"

"Diego can pick locks." Still captivated by that same spot, Klaus nodded like he was confirming something unrelated. "I can too."

“Let me guess, if it’s handcuffs, you can manage it with your teeth.”

Klaus shook his head, frowned at Five. “What?”

“Klaus,” Vanya said, carefully, “are you all right?”

"Dandy." Klaus touched Diego's arm, a fleeting point of pressure. "I'll get my things."

"What things? You're just going across the—And he's not listening," Luther said, throwing up both hands when Klaus breezed past the table. "Until we know what we're dealing with we can't afford pointless distractions, so if he's going to—"

"If he's going to what?" Diego pushed away from the counter. "Go ahead and finish that sentence, brother."

Allison stood, gripped the back of her chair. "Luther said you slept in Klaus' room last night. Why? What's going on?"

_Don't go_. 

Diego wasn't even sure he was meant to hear it, the last thing Klaus said before giving in to the only flavor of oblivion he'd indulged in since they'd dealt with all the shit that went down around the averted apocalypse. And that was after Diego had felt Klaus' heartbeat jackrabbit when the first kid appeared, after he'd realized it was grief that choked Klaus' voice when the girl joined him. Smoothing away tear tracks, maneuvering Klaus to curl up with him on the floor, Diego wasn't going to stop any of that to figure out why he felt like he'd been gutted. All he knew was that walking away from that room was not an option.

Neither was spilling any of those details to their siblings. Diego wasn't about to flay Klaus open for their inspection.

"Seems like I didn't make myself clear earlier," he said. "You want to know about Klaus, you ask him, not me."

“Come on, Diego, you know he doesn't talk to us like he talks to you. Or Ben."

"And whose fault is that?" Diego asked.

"Ours." Five shrugged when Luther and Allison shot him equally incredulous looks. "Luther literally asked Diego to translate a sound Klaus made. Think about it." Dumping his empty cups and their lids in recycle bins Diego was positive he'd never seen before, Five made for the door. “Why would Klaus say anything meaningful to people who aren’t really listening?”

A kind of stupefied silence held the kitchen for a long minute after Five’s exit. Diego wasn’t inclined to break it, to give them that out.

Following Five’s lead, he gave Klaus’ cold coffee to the drain, took care of the trash, and left with a nod towards Vanya. He found Klaus sitting on the bottom step just outside the kitchen, chin resting on one bent knee, green eyes lucid and open wide. The coat he wore was one of Diego’s, so he hadn’t been there the whole time, but—“What did you hear?”

“Nothing.” Klaus stood, fumbling to get into lined pockets that were luckily clear of knives. “About that, about what I didn’t hear you say, thank you.”

“Nothing to thank me for, right?” Diego led the way up and through the foyer. “How’d you know I can pick locks?”

“Were you aware of how many hours sobriety adds to the day? With scads of unaccounted for time on my hands, I thought, what to do, what to do.” Klaus hooked the front door with the toe of his sneaker, hop-kicked it shut. “Luckily, a whole lot of dots turned up, all of them begging to be scooped up and connected. The belt part of your favorite harness is fascinating, by the way. I simply must get my hands on it one of these days, see what else you’ve got hidden behind that big buckle.”

On the sidewalk, Diego scanned the street and the wide building crouched on its opposite side. Every damn one of its windows was covered in sun-glare. “I gotta be honest with you, man,” he said, deliberately leaning into a lower register, laying it on thick, “my belt isn’t just wide, it’s long and heavy. Might be too much for you to handle.”

The brilliance of Klaus’ eyes dialed up, his smile rippling with dimples. “Diego Hargreeves, I am shocked and appalled,” he said in a tone that was all over the scales, “to only just now discover you’ve been holding out on me. Our entire lives we could’ve been doing this, thrusting and, okay, maybe not parrying, because who in their right or wrong mind would want to ward off or evade you, and I mean it in the purely verbal sense anyway. But if you are so inclined, do keep your head in the gutter. I’m right there with you, baby.”

“Yeah, well,” Diego stepped down from the curb, crossed the street with Klaus trailing behind and skipping over the median strip, “right now I need you to break and enter with me. I wanna get this done before Luther—“

“Follows our father unto the fields of aneurysm?”

“Something like that.”

Empty parking spots didn’t extend to an empty building, Diego knew that too well, but the pile-up of newspapers on the stoop, and the way the plants in the containers guarding the front door wept for water, notched up the odds in their favor. “Five should’ve taken this one.”

“Oh?”

“He could pop in, stay outside of the camera’s range. We’ll need to either disable them or—“

“We’ll be fine. Get to lock picking.”

Diego turned to Klaus. “Fine how?”

“To answer that we’ll have to revisit a few of my leaner years, but if you insist.” Klaus said, “Look, if I’d stopped to worry about every security camera, that beady red eye blinking at me, I would have rarely gotten my hands on food that wasn’t stale, half-eaten, whatever.”

“Okay.” Diego blanked that bit of insight into his brother’s life from his mind, temporarily. “S-so what did you do?”

Klaus shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Remind me how this is relevant?”

“Cameras get all shy around ghosts. It’s kinda sweet, really.” Klaus dropped his curious stare from the raven-headed door knocker to the air at his elbow. “They’re not saying as much, but reading between the lines, they’re happy to run interference.”

Instinctively, Diego looked down: cracked pavement, a couple of pennies and a dime, smeared gum. “The kids’ve been here this whole time or—“

“They never left,” Klaus said, “but don’t even think about buttoning back up. There is an upside to their pint size, that being how sexual innuendo goes right over their heads.” 

“If the girl is twelve—“

“Really wish they’d tell me their names.” Seeming to realize what he’d said, Klaus’ nose scrunched. “That’s new.”

“She probably understands plenty.” Taking the steps two at a time, Diego slipped a couple of hooks out from the pick set built into the belt Klaus had apparently been studying. “More than you and I did at that same age.”

“That’s true. We _were_ sheltered. Pruned into shape like little super-powered bonsai trees.”

Diego huffed a laugh, went down on a knee in front of the door. Klaus’ shadow stained the light wood grain; a skinny shield, bulked up by Diego’s coat. Not trying to distract Diego from his task, Klaus kept up a running narration, explaining the technique Diego used, that a bobby pin or paperclip worked in a pinch. In no time at all, the lock gave, the door knob eagerly turning in Diego’s hand. “Which one wanted to know how it’s done?” 

“He did. She was too busy ogling your rump.” Klaus made a motion like he was ushering someone inside ahead of him, loudly tsked, “Now, now, there’s no reason to deny it. Not when your taste in men is so very del—“

“Don’t embarrass her, Klaus.”

“Excuse me, who is it I’m embarrassing?” Klaus pointedly looked at Diego’s cheekbones—the heat Diego felt rising beneath his skin probably bleeding red across it—and softly smiled. Slick blue-veined marble under his feet, Klaus abruptly spun on a heel beneath a chandelier shaped like an octopus. Five tentacles, all mid-writhe, carried lights like candle flames. “Also, after that knight in shinning armor comment, I’d say it’s official. You’re our girl’s favorite Hargreeves.” He raised a hand, poised for a high five, but whether or not it was reciprocated was lost on Diego. To either the girl or the painting of an Iditarod sled dog team hanging low on the far wall, Klaus said, “Yours and mine both, sweetie.”

“For your sake, I hope Ben didn’t hear that.” A host of old-fashioned ghosts haunted the room to Diego’s left: white sheets covered at least a dozen pieces of furniture, a fireplace mantel, fell in folds from a lucite coat stand. A noise like water running through an aquarium tank’s filter cycled through the clutter, but it wasn’t wise to lift the sheets, to check. Returning to the foyer, Diego glanced at Klaus, then over to where the kids might’ve been. “We four have a job to do now. Find the security footage. How about the first one of us to do that gets the bed tonight?”

Strangely gratified to know he’d been looking in the right area, Diego had his answer in under a handful of seconds, and in the form of a flashing grin and thumbs-up from Klaus. 

“Put that fine ass of yours into gear, Diego.” Klaus took off running for the stairs. “One of us needs to secure the damn bed.”

The first floor, Diego quickly realized, ducking into room after room, was a bust. Everything in the place was odd but elegant: two grand pianos facing off on clawed feet, a mahogany bar built into the prow of a reclaimed ship, cabinets stuffed with curiosities that put the Academy’s contents to shame. All kinds of swords took up shelf space alongside leather-bound and glossy paperback books in the library, but it was a pair of knives embedded in a dart board that held Diego’s attention the longest. Inset gems the exact shade of Klaus’ eyes winked at Diego from ebony tangs, and his fingers itched to—

“Found it,” Klaus called down. “Third floor, last room on the right, behind a giant Wurlitzer.”

“A what?” Diego hit the second floor landing, hurried up the next flight. “Klaus?”

“Who are these people? Who puts one of these in a ginormous spare bedroom?” Klaus asked when Diego appeared in the door. He turned back to the elaborate band organ taking up some of the room’s prime real estate, and for a few wasted minutes, they both stood there taking in the facade. The silver pipes. The painted scene: a clear lake, snow-capped mountains behind an elk and ram, a lone bear, mated wolves. In bas-relief on either side of the thing, two women in outdated dresses held some kind of long bronze horn. “Sadly, it doesn’t work.”

“The equipment’s behind it?”

Klaus walked over to stand on the organ’s left side, crooked his finger at Diego, and slipped out of sight. A thump like Klaus had bumped into a table or boxy television preceded a yelp, then a thud like he’d kicked whatever it was, doling out a bit of retribution.

Diego might’ve shaken his head, but he was smiling when he followed, when he asked, “Everything okay back here?”

“Peachy.” Klaus drew up Diego’s sweater, inched down his pants’ waistband, rubbed a thumb over a darkening spot below his hipbone. “Wrong fruit. That’s going to plum.” An unconcerned shrug before the sweater dropped back into place, forcing Diego’s eyes to haltingly adjust from acres of smooth cream skin to pitch black knit. Flapping a hand at the honeycomb of flatscreens they’d been searching for, Klaus asked, “Do you think we’ll find anything? My money’s on Five wanting us out of his spiffily coifed hair.”

“One way to find out.”

Short as they’d been, Diego’s days at the police academy came in handy more often than not. In the span of time it took Klaus to sit crosslegged on the floor, the screens rolled out footage covering the street and lower half of the Academy, their neighbor’s fenced-in back entrance, various rooms and the wine-stocked cellar. Diego tracked timestamps, adjusted accordingly, half-listening to the metallic shuffle of dog tags turning over and over in Klaus’ hand, to the words his brother whispered. 

_Dave_. 

_Nam_. 

_Gone_ , then, _like you_.

Diego swallowed to relieve his suddenly dry throat, only the problem wasn’t localized, his chest strained and ached as bad. Klaus’ one-sided conversation continued, and Diego tried to concentrate on the feed—headlights bobbing over the street; a tight line of people momentarily split down the middle by a fire hydrant—but his heartbeat was scraping against his ribs, pitching itself against bone, and it was all Diego could do to—

“Wait,” Klaus said, scooting forward on his knees, “go back.”

Nearly vibrating with impatience, Klaus stayed at his elbow while Diego manipulated the footage. A quick, hard jab of his finger tilted back the center screen, but Diego saw what Klaus was aiming at: A man of above average height, in nondescript clothes, lingering far too long in front of the Academy’s front steps.

“I think he—Yeah, see, there,” Klaus said as the scene played out, “he turns ar—“ The word was sliced in half by Klaus’ knife-sharp gasp. He pivoted clumsily, dropping to his hands. Rapidly, gracelessly, he crawled towards open air. “Shit. Shit. Diego, something’s wrong.”

Diego was out of his chair and on the ground beside Klaus before he could get out, “Wh-what do you—“

“The kids, they’re freaking out.“ Klaus reached out both hands, fingers curling to clutch, to offer comfort. Thwarted, he pulled them back. “Sweetie?” His body ebbed towards and away from something Diego couldn’t see. “Little Man?” Frantic concern colored his voice, even as Klaus’ knuckles, his face, went so pale his skin was practically porcelain. “Can’t you hear them? They’re keening, Diego. Whimpering. They’ve been so quiet, so silent, I thought—They’re curled up like they’re gonna be hit, but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t—“

“Klaus.” Diego caught his brother’s hand and, lacing their fingers together, tugged on that connection, determined to widen Klaus’ painfully narrowed focus to include him, to let him in. “We can’t help them if you pass out on us. Breathe.” With Klaus’ hand pinned to his chest, Diego waited out breath after hard-won breath, waited for the shaking to lapse into something closer to steady. “If I ask them questions, if they answer, will you—“

“Yes.” Klaus bunched the material beneath his hand, used it to yank Diego closer. “They’re here.”

The hardwood shone where Klaus indicated the kids lay waiting for a blow that wasn’t coming. Diego lifted his eyes to where he thought one of their faces might be, hoped he had it right when he said, “Sweetheart, I know you’re scared, that something’s hurting you. We want to make it stop. We’ll make it go away, but if we’re going to do that, we need to know what it is, right?”

Klaus whispered, “They’re still making those sounds, still curled up, but her eyes are open. She’s looking at you.”

“That’s great, sweetheart, thank you.” Diego returned Klaus’ gesture, squeezing his slimmer hand, knotting their fingers even more tightly together. “You know Klaus can hear you, that he’s listening, don’t you?”

“I think she’s trying to…she’s nodding. They both are.”

“Hey, Little Man,” Diego said, again hoping he was aiming in the right direction. “You think maybe you can tell us what’s wrong? What’s scaring you?”

Time seemed to slow and stretch, to fill with the sound of his own heartbeat pounding hard in Diego’s ears, with Klaus’ voice spinning encouraging words into lullabies, soft and lilting. Diego wouldn’t have been able to say, not with any hope of accuracy, if minutes or an hour passed before Klaus’ eyes narrowed, his brow pinched. 

Like he was following the path of a pointed finger, Klaus turned his head towards the screens. 

He murmured, “It—I think it was something they saw on there.”

Everything with the kids had happened so goddamned fast, Diego hadn’t spared a thought for the feed, left it running. Reluctantly loosening his hold on Klaus’ hand, Diego got to his feet and moved back to the console. The timestamp and lack of any kind of traffic on the street and sidewalks read as a quarter after one in the morning. It had been closer to twelve thirty when that guy had—“Klaus?”

“Yeah?”

“Last night, you said someone…did something to them?”

“Some fucking bastard—“ Klaus shuddered like he was seeing the damage inflicted on the kids for the first time, but then his spine stiffened. He shoved up from the floor. “They only reacted when—“

“That’s right. I didn’t get a good look at his—“ Diego didn’t so much as glance at the floor, but Klaus shifted, subtly, so even the non-offending screens were blocked by both of their bodies. So they could keep their voices down. “Please tell me you saw that fucker’s face.”

“No, I…They were so loud all of a sudden, I…” Klaus shrugged, a little helpless, a little like he was turning a blade on himself. Diego watched it pass over Klaus’ face, self-loathing as persistent as someone’s shadow, knew he had to get Klaus out into the sunlight, get the kids away from the footage that rolled on. “We can’t replay it, Diego.”

“We’re not going to. Five is.” Diego lifted his chin, asked, “Are they still there?”

Klaus checked over his shoulder. His breath hitched. “She’s holding him. Rocking him.” The eyes Klaus turned back to Diego were bruised. “We have to do something.”

“We will,” Diego promised. “Right now, we’re getting out of here.”

* * *

“Not there.” Klaus veered away from the path he’d been pacing to shoo Allison over to an armchair. Ready and willing to sustain a twisted ankle or contend with shin sprints, Klaus was absolutely going to do what he had to to keep any of his siblings from sitting on either side of Diego on the couch. They'd been back at the Academy for several hours and then some, and the kids might've kept their eyes on Klaus, but it was Diego they continued to do their incorporeal best to cuddle against. “For god’s sake, the twenty other seats in this abysmal museum aren’t part of the exhibit, use them.”

“What’s gotten into—“

“Not a single drug,” Klaus said around his thumbnail. “Or a drop of alcohol. If that’s what—“

“It wasn’t.” Had Klaus not known better, he might've thought Allison meant it. “Where’s Five?”

With considerable care, and so slowly the move wouldn’t have startled the fly buzzing nonstop in a nearby pair of taxidermied ears, Diego stretched both arms out along the back of the couch. “Don’t know.”

Klaus snapped his fingers. “Maybe he really did burn those connections and he’s been searching for a fire extinguisher this whole time.”

“That seems unlikely,” Luther said from the bar stool Klaus had pushed and shoved and pushed him some more onto. “You know we could start without him and—“

“You could.” Five popped into place leaning against a column. “But you shouldn’t, ever.”

"We're all here now." Vanya set aside her bow, the rosin she'd been applying to the strings in long repetitive passes. "It's safe to assume you found something?"

Bless Vanya's healing heart, she'd posed the question to Klaus. Looked to him and only him for the answer. And the thing was—objectively, logically, and all that—Klaus knew the suffocating, painting-laden walls around them belonged to the Academy. That the looming brick building itself was on the same street in the same city in the same country. So it didn't make one bit of sense, the thought that had unspooled like barbed wire at the back of Klaus' head, that insisted he'd suddenly stepped onto foreign soil. Sans briefcase, no less. And with no markers—uniforms, bombs exploding with enough force to rock even the dead, a select number of truly heinous slurs tossed around like grenades—to indicate where the fuck he was or what language he should use to communicate.

With his vocal cords having turned into silent, stubborn bastards, much like his father, Klaus drew down on an already ragged nail bed, settled in to decimate it entirely.

A throat softly cleared.

Klaus didn't flinch, or not quite, maybe a little, but his gaze found Diego's, then, and stayed put in that unblinking darkness. Diego had looked at their girl the same way, like he wouldn't be moved, not by anything, so long as she was hurting. Never mind that she occupied a liminal space beyond his reach, Diego had tried to find her, had called her sweetheart. He'd included their little man, used that deep voice to soothe a terrified child he couldn't see. 

Diego had let Klaus hold his furious heartbeat in the tattooed palm of his hand.

Answering their sister was the least Klaus could do. "Assume away, but duty compels me to report a teeny tiny hiccup in the proceedings. Someone's going to have to go back over there." 

Who knew when Five moved, or if he used his legs and actual steps to do so, but he was right there when Klaus turned to address him, his head cocked at a concentrated angle. 

"Hi, hey," Klaus said, flicking his fingers in a wave, "from this close I can smell the white bread and marshmallow on you. If you were wondering, it pairs surprisingly well with the eau de Cuban cigar liberally applied to that snazzy sweater vest. So what do you say, Five, might I be able to induce you to pop into the neighbor's place, get a Wurlitzer whirling again?"

"Just to be clear, we _are_ talking about an actual large-scale band organ?"

"What else? Is it _possible_ there’s a stripper pole out there that spins, whirls, gyrates? Sure, but that way madness and damaged dicks lies. Lie? Lay? Where’s Ben when you need him?” Bring out the Bibles, Klaus thought, because he would’ve sworn Five's lips twitched into a facsimile of an amused human's smile. “Anyway, the security setup was ingeniously stowed behind it. Out of sight, out of amateur robbers' minds, as they say."

Five seemed to consider the request, then shrugged. "All right."

"Really? I mean, that's nice of you, thanks for being down, the timestamp to look for is—"

"Hold on." Luther moved nearer to the group. Or, if Klaus was going to be a stickler about it, really adhere to the facts of the matter: nearer to Allison. "What was the hiccup?"

"We didn't get a good look at a face. Need another pair of eyes on it." To Five, Diego said, "Start at twelve thirty, give it a few minutes. If you can get me a—“

"I still don't understand. Did someone catch you?" Luther asked. "Was there a glitch in the feed?"

"I think," Vanya said, "there might be a reason they're not spelling it out."

Klaus gasped. "You see the dots too? Diego, I'm starting a club with Vanya, you want in?"

"This is ridiculous." 

In response to his muttered comment, and adorably in sync, both kids flipped Luther off. Her with her scuffed and torn knuckles, him with his stubby finger and split nail. And much as he'd hate a repeat of the previous evening's coughing debacle, witnessing it, Klaus nearly choked on his next breath. The aborted sound he made instead was loud enough to get Diego's attention, prompting his brother to rise from the couch and, followed by two additional shadows, walk over to stand close by Klaus' side.

Diego leaned in, asked, "What'd they do?"

Klaus slanted his head to answer, caught the curve of Diego's satin-smooth lips with his own, and he couldn't remember—he couldn't _think_ —couldn’t think of the last contact, brief as an inhale or bite to break a pill, that had him slipping so steeply into craving.

Every muscle locked, holding him there, where it should have been possible to take another, deeper taste, except—Klaus whisper-rasped, "They...they gave Luther a one-finger salute."

He didn't see Diego's smile, but— _sweet fucking Christ_ —the shape of it was perfectly, exquisitely rendered by the shift and scrape of his stubble against Klaus' cheek. “No shit?" Diego's breath washed warm over Klaus' jaw. "You want to bet our girl was a scrapper?" 

"You should see her knuckles. She fought back, D—"

“ _She_?” Luther asked, “Klaus, is someone else here?"

Beside him, Diego went still except for his right hand. Curling. Clenching. Prepared to defend their kids and the secret Klaus gave him the night they appeared. "He doesn't owe you that, Luther."

"He does if it affects—"

Their girl planted herself in front of Klaus, arched a wispy eyebrow. Tilted her head.

Minutely, Klaus shook his.

She poked at him, going for his stomach, and frowned when her finger shivered, slivered, returned to form.

Klaus widened his eyes and stared straight ahead. Hard.

He was aware of her mouth opening, but she remained mute. Lifting one hand to her abraded throat, she tried again, and again, and finally closed her eyes. Her shoulders trembled like she was about to—“Shit, no,” Klaus blurted, “please don’t, sweetie. It’s okay, you don’t have to—”

“What—“

“Leave it, Luther, for one goddamned minute.” Diego pressed a hand to Klaus’ lower back. “If this is upsetting her, you go, get them up to our room.”

“Them?”

“ _Our_?”

“She wanted to say something,” Klaus told Diego, “but she can’t. It’s not working.”

“What about Little Man? Maybe he can?”

Standing by Diego, not quite holding his hand, the boy tried. The damage on either side of his mouth held his lips stiff, held them immobile at a thin slit. Watching as their little man tried again—frustration running through his small body like a current, making him shake—Klaus’ stomach contracted. Tightened around a pain that was worse, a thousand times worse, than any punch he’d ever taken or any kick he’d ever absorbed, hard enough to crack a rib. He went down on his knees, and it was pointless to open his arms, but the kids seemed to know and crowded close, anguish welling in the many wounds on their faces.

Diego must have followed him down, because he was there when Klaus turned to find him, took his weight when Klaus folded in, and bared the secret-keeping curve of his neck, the safest place Klaus knew to rest his head. “If they can’t talk,” Diego said, “we’ll find another way.”

“All the others that wouldn’t shut up, wouldn’t stop screaming,” Klaus murmured, “but the ones I want to hear, I can’t.”

“Klaus,” Five kept his distance, “are we dealing with kids?”

“We?” Klaus laughed, a thin sound, shuddering in places. “Assuming you mean Diego and me, the only thing we need from you is that face from the footage. After that, you are out of the van. Relieved of all duties, soldier.”

“ _Why_ do you need it?”

“You heard Vanya.” Klaus lifted a hand to touch the column of Diego’s throat, to feel the vibration of that voice beneath the pads of two fingers. “There’s a reason we’re not saying.”

Their girl waved, and when she had Klaus’ attention, nodded.

Frowning, Klaus said, “I don’t—”

Cutting him off, she pointed to Diego, then touched the brutality wrapped around her own throat, mimed sound coming out of her mouth. Finally, she jabbed a finger in Five’s direction. 

“What does that— _Goddamnit_ , this is no time to suck at Charades, Klaus, get it together.”

“That’s my girl.” Diego smiled, hunkering down. “What is she doing?”

“Well,” Klaus said, “she pointed to you first, and touched her throat, made—Oh. Wait. You mean it’s okay if Diego answers Five?”

An emphatic nod. 

Klaus mirrored his brother’s smile, told him, “She is. She’s okay with it.”

“What about—“

“Him, too,” Klaus confirmed before Little Man had a chance to stop nodding with gusto.

“You let me know if that changes.” Over his own sweater, Diego's hand drew constant circles between Klaus' shoulder blades. "Two kids appeared to Klaus last night." His tone textured with threat, with violence, Diego said, "I told them I'd take care of whatever it was that hurt them. And I'm not going back on that promise."

"You mean—"

Ignoring Allison, hovering at the edge of the rug where loose threads had tangled as tightly as her fingers, Diego kept only one of their siblings in his sights. "Get us that face, Five. What happens next, that's for me and Klaus to see through."

"Maybe. Maybe not." 

Five popped his blue-hued bubble, disappeared.

At some point, their girl had moved to Diego's other side. Wearing a streak of adoration like a particularly fetching shade of makeup above each broken cheekbone, she leaned towards him. 

Klaus nudged Diego with an elbow. "Lift your other arm."

"Why am I doing this?" he asked, even as he didn't hesitate, holding his arm loose and open in midair.

With what Klaus imagined to be a pleased sigh, their girl scooted closer, careful to keep her shoulders hunched beneath Diego's arm, unwilling to be splintered by the contact, further separated. The smile she gave first to Klaus, then to Diego, made the overhead lights seem dim. Dull. Like they should all be replaced pronto, forthwith. 

Little Man—sitting back on his heels, taking it all in—rolled his eyes.

Leaving Luther’s repetitive rapid-fire questions for Diego to field, Klaus asked the kids, “I don't suppose you knew each other? Before?"

Each nodded in turn. She pulled a finger along an invisible line between Klaus and Allison, between herself and Little Man. It sadly took him a few seconds to translate, but when her meaning registered, Klaus sat up straight. 

"Got it." Five reappeared exactly where he'd been, holding out a piece of paper, the image facedown. "Luther, I'm going to need that note."

"Why?"

"Guys," Klaus said while Diego folded and pocketed the photo without looking at it, "new development."

Vanya stepped forward. "What is it?"

“The kids are siblings."

* * *

Diego paused in front of Klaus' closed door. Listened to his brother’s voice on the other side. Breezing between random topics, Klaus barely made it through a string of wholly formed sentences before his laugh rose like some kind of high force wind, slipped out the gap beneath the door to howl all down the hallway.

Smiling at the sound— _like a goddamn dope_ —Diego was about to put knuckles to wood when Klaus began to loudly hum, and the door, it was thrown wide open. Shaking his shoulders, shimmying his leather skirt-clad hips, Klaus curled a beckoning finger. “Come a little bit closer, you’re my kind of man,” he crooned, “so big and so strong, come a little bit closer, I’m all alone and the night is so long.”

He danced back a step, another, and took up the fringe dripping from the skirt beneath his bared belly button. Twirling and swinging the strings with one hand, Klaus held the other up, circled his wrist around and around, spinning a shorter, invisible partner.

“You dancin’ with my girl, Klaus?”

“Only until you cut in.” Reaching out, Klaus grabbed a fistful of Diego’s shirt, pulled. They stumbled some, feet catching on the crap covering the floor, arms catching each other. While Diego steadied them both, Klaus used the proximity to whisper-hiss, “She’s grinning like a giddy schoolgirl, Diego, acting exactly like the kid she should still be. Dance with her or I swear I’ll—“

“You know I will, but you’ll have to guide me. Make sure I stay with her.” Disentangling from Klaus, kicking clear a spot to move around in, Diego presented his hand. “You going to dance with me now, sweetheart?”

“An enthusiastic yes.” Klaus stepped up behind Diego, put a hand on either hip. Each slender finger seemed to burn through the worn thin sweatpants Diego had hastily traded the leather for. “Who’s providing the music? Me? Oh, all right, if you really think I should.”

Dipping back into the notes of the same song he'd greeted Diego with, Klaus picked up the melody. His hands on Diego’s hips firm, Klaus urged him forward a step, back, again, pacing it out like they were salsa dancing or something. 

“Lower your head a tad.” Klaus squeezed the muscle beneath his palm, thumb stroking like a matchstick over cotton, and Diego's next thought—that he must’ve gotten the angle right—stuttered. _Christ_. ”And I just couldn't resist—shift to the left—just one little kiss, so exciting."

A long, lithe, undulating line at Diego's back. That was Klaus. Exaggerating lyrics already soaked in temptation, the heat of his brother’s breath coaxed the skin at Diego's nape to respond with a humid sheen of sweat. How long they moved like that, with Klaus so damn close and not close enough, seamlessly adjusting Diego's stance, barely there pauses in the song's stride that kept Diego and their girl in step—"If you could see her face, Diego."

"Wh-what color are her eyes?"

"Blue. The sweetest blue." The catch in Klaus' voice found its echo in a fumbled step. "Sorry, shit, I'm sorry, I—"

"Hey." Diego turned, slid his arms around Klaus like the song had switched, slowed, like it was all right to just hold him in that one suspended moment. "What was done to them, what they went through, baby, you don't have to apologize for—"

“Maybe not with you." Klaus toyed with the fabric stretched across Diego's back. He sighed. "The others—"

"Can fuck off if it makes them uncomfortable."

Klaus laughed, or it might've been a breath. An audible shiver. Sheltering his forehead in the curve where Diego’s neck sloped into shoulder, Klaus pressed slightly chapped lips to Diego’s pulse. Feather-light, impossible to deny. Diego tightened his hold, slipped his own lips into the soft, sweetly scented short curls at Klaus’ temple.

His eyes closed, and for maybe the second time since she’d—it wasn’t Eudora’s face there, in the dark, in his mind’s eye.

The hand that had roamed restless and wanting towards the small of Klaus’ back stilled. “Klaus—“

“I know what your lips feel like now.” Klaus was in Diego’s arms, and it sounded like he was miles away. “I shouldn’t, but I do, because I stole it, that knowledge. Unintentionally, but who cares, what does that matter? It’s mine.”

Diego hesitated for only a fraction of a second. “I felt it.” Hours later the sensation was still there when Diego reached for it, and his pulse reacted just the same, spiked just the same. “Felt yours.” If their siblings hadn’t been crowded around, boot heels alongside high heels, all stubbornly dug into that unraveling rug he’d knelt on with Klaus—“It’s mine too.”

Klaus lifted his head, pulled back a little, and Diego noticed, noticed how the evening’s fading light made no difference: Those eyes of his were luminous. Even with the blown pupils, through the darkly smudged makeup, the green shone. “If that’s true,” Klaus said, quietly, “how is it possible you don’t want another taste? Am I so—“

“I never said I didn’t.”

With Luther’s questions dogging his every step, and with Five following at his elbow, insisting they go back over that note—this half sheet of paper cut by creases and scored by a few scrawled lines that were damn near illegible—Diego hadn’t been able to say _anything_ to Klaus. Allison had wanted to see the picture Diego had purposefully pocketed, Vanya agreed it was important, and Klaus’ tether to the kids—He couldn’t be there, not with that murderous bastard’s face being passed around.

Palming Klaus’ jaw, starting with the tip of his thumb set against the far corner of Klaus’ mouth, Diego covered the lower curve in one slow ceaseless drag. “If you want another taste, take it, don’t make us wait—“

“Us?“ Klaus licked his lips, following the line Diego’s skin had mapped, and searched his expression for a trick or the lie. When he found neither, Klaus’ smile was like nothing Diego had ever, in his entire life, seen before. The taut line of Klaus’ body relaxed until they were once more chest to chest, breath to breath. “Did you know, did you realize,” he said, “that you called me baby? And so sweetly, Diego, it made me ache.”

Diego’s eyes widened at that, then narrowed. _When had he_ —

“Say it again?” Klaus murmured against Diego’s lips, “Put it on my tongue.”

“Feed you anything I want,” Diego smiled, slow, and _felt_ Klaus mirror the move, felt the stir of fevered air that was his laugh, “and you’ll swallow it all down. That was your line, right?”

“Yeah, it fuck _ing Christ_ —” Klaus jerked back in Diego’s arms, stopping just short of overbalancing them both, and whipped his head to the right to glare at the corner. “ _Jesus_ , Ben, _now_?”

Diego blinked. “Wh—“

“I’ll take as many names in vain as I…Oh, stop it with the pointing out of obvious things we in no way, shape, or form forgot—“

“Klaus.” Diego gently gripped his chin, brought Klaus’ head back around. “Ben hasn’t been here the—“

“Never let our best and beloved brother tell you he doesn’t pick his precious moments.” Exhaling, Klaus dropped his head to Diego’s shoulder, returned to burrowing into his neck. “He said we should hurry up and fucking kiss already, and-slash-or remember there are kids in the room.” To the apparently occupied corner, Klaus shot back, “Those _were_ your exact words, you hyper-reasonable coc-kissblocker.”

Eyebrows arching, Diego shook his head. “Why did you bother?” 

Klaus shrugged, easily readjusting in his arms when Diego shifted to have more than a slice of the room in sight.

“Where are they?”

“By the chair.” Squinting, Klaus said, “They don’t look scandalized. Does that mean we need to try harder or—”

“No.”

“And that, my darling digital-age children, is what we call old-fashioned stereo sound.” For the kids’ benefit—Diego would have done the same, gone for a smile or laugh, even if it was silent—Klaus made a show of ringing out his ear. “Hey, did I ever tell you about the time that guy tried to deafen me with a spork? The medic thought it was hilarious until I—“

“Sweetheart,” Diego cut in, “Little Man, we’re sorry we got carried away and—“

“Is that what happened? Ben implied we weren’t moving fast en—“

Diego pinched Klaus’ hip. “Forgive us?”

Unmooring himself from Diego’s side, Klaus picked his way over a landslide of books, a ukulele down at least one string, and several shirts narrowly striped with eye-popping colors. By the chair the kids must’ve remained near, Klaus bent, cupped a hand around his mouth. For the full minute he stayed like that, whispering almost non-stop, Diego only caught a few words, heard _share_ and _your man_. Klaus waited for a gestured response, turned back to Diego with a grin. “All’s well that—Actually, that wasn’t at all the climactic ending I’d had in mind, _that_ ending—“

On a huffed laugh, Diego walked over to the bed, flopped down on his back. He stared at the ceiling, splattered with what Diego hoped was nail polish, and laced his fingers together over his abdomen. A three-quarter moon was up; its light filtered through the window, shining on the curving folds and waves of Klaus’ cool sheet as though the pooled cotton was still water. Klaus kept up a stream of chatter, splicing in comments meant for Ben, but his voice was muted. A surprisingly soothing hum. Covered in the warmth of that sound, Diego let his eyes ease shut.

Let himself drift between awareness and the start of a dream shaped by Klaus’ mouth, his slim hands.

When the mattress finally dipped, when the air sweetened with the nearness of Klaus’ skin, Diego blindly reached for him. Grazed his temple, his cheek, those lips with a kiss. Then, in an almost unrecognizable voice, thick with sleep and something else, something that maybe veered into contentment’s lane, Diego heard himself say, “G’night, sweetheart, Little Man.”

“What about me?”

Putting on a drowsy smirk, Diego rucked up the skirt and urged Klaus’ legs to give way to one of his, rocked his hips into the cradle of Klaus’ curled body. “Sweet dreams, baby.”

* * *

The mess on Klaus’ floor had inexplicably expanded over two days. It was in his head, clear as any of his intentions ever were—the exceptions being those he harbored towards Dave, Diego, and Ben, Klaus thought, his trinity of constants—to pass some time picking up the unused and abandoned board games he’d dragged out of a far-flung cobwebbed closet. To gather up one worse-for-wear deck of cards he’d bummed off of Five. Put away the ukulele he got from…somewhere…and about the strings, he absolutely did not snap that second one. For all of a minute, he’d actually and honestly considered returning the books Vanya had borrowed from the library for Klaus to read to the kids while they waited.

And waited.

And kept on waiting.

For Diego’s contact at the station to come through with a name, a fucking rank, a goddamned serial number. For one of Five’s cigar-smoking connections to turn over information that would lead them to that bastard in the photo. The face Klaus still hadn’t seen, not that he was able to rouse even an ounce of feeling put out over that fact. Not after Diego had reeled him in, held him close, and in a low voice like a breath against Klaus’ temple, described frozen blue eyes, a broken nose, a mouth like the split branches they found in the courtyard and used to step on, to snap, such a satisfying sound to a bunch of kids who wouldn’t dream of doing the same.

Not until they all had done just that, internally, one way or another. “All but our ever-devoted Number One.”

Their girl looked up from the book cover she’d been staring at for, oh, quarter of an hour. Unable to trace the spread of ivy climbing a cobbled-together tower, the raven keeping watch from the turret or the wolf guarding its door, her fingers hovered and flexed over the paper. 

“You really did like that one best, huh?”

A distracted nod, back to not touching the book.

“Did you see that? An inanimate object is more interesting than me. _Me_. This is…this is truly shattering. Life as I, and as such _you_ ,” Klaus pointed at Ben, “knew it—”

“Has changed for the better.” From the end of the bed, where he’d stationed himself beside Little Man, the two of them unsuccessful in their many attempts to make shadow figures show on the wall, Ben said, “Unless, of course, you actually can’t stand cuddling with Diego. Maybe you hate feeling his—“ 

“Bite your blasphemous tongue, Ben.”

Ben smiled, sly, said, “All right then.”

Folding down to sit crosslegged on the floor, Klaus pulled another book onto his lap. Idly thumbed through the pages. Their girl leaned over, pointed every now and again at a picture: dark doorways, rope coiled snake-like on a rough wood floor, apples lined up on a windowsill, their skins a shiny red in the sunlight. “Ben,” Klaus said after a while, “what am I doing wrong?”

“For once? Nothing. Why?”

“I’ve been trying to…but they still can’t speak. Can’t touch anything. I thought if I could—“

“You’ve gained more control over your powers, yeah, but not everything is on you,” Ben insisted. “They both know you and Diego are doing everything you can for them. Maybe they just don’t feel the need to shout their trauma at you.”

Klaus let that pass without comment, turning back to a page near the beginning of the book that caught their girl’s attention. She tapped the air above the first line and slid questioning eyes up to Klaus. “I should read it again?”

Another nod, accompanied by a sheepish smile that was impossible to refuse. 

With the book balanced between them, Klaus gave each character a different voice, digging into his mostly reliable memory bank for the more theatrical ones he’d heard over the years. He read straight through several knocks on his door. Read until his throat scratched like sand, and it was long past the time he should’ve stopped, preferably to consecutively down three full glasses of water. He read page after page, chapter after chapter, because Little Man had swung down from the bed to join them. Because their girl was thoroughly absorbed in the story, and Klaus wasn’t willing to take its vibrant world away from her, to replace it with their colder real one.

Not until the choice was taken out of his hands by _The End_. 

Even that, he knew, rifling back to the first page, didn’t mean they had to—

A glass of water appeared over Klaus’ shoulder. He took it gladly, looking up at Diego. His voice was more croak than dulcet tone when he said, “Hi. Thanks. Hero.” 

“I hear you’ve been at this a while,” Diego said. “That you missed dinner.”

“If you only heard about it, apparently so did you.”

“Thought I had a lead, but…” Diego scrubbed the back of his head, dug into his neck with his palm and all five fingertips. “This guy isn’t on any fucking grid we know about.” Giving Klaus’ position on the floor a wide berth, mindful of the kids’ location even if he wasn’t sure about it, Diego sat on the edge of the bed. “Five’s about ready to shove a whole damn box of Cubans down Rilke’s throat if he doesn’t—“

“Rilke?”

“One of Five’s connections. Thinks he’s a poet, likes to piss Five off by insisting they speak only in couplets, something like that.”

“Huh. Dave liked Whitman,” Klaus said, vaguely aware of the soft edges fanning out along the room’s frame, how his vision tunneled back several decades, “and Tennyson. He knew every word of _Dream of Fair Women_ , every word by heart. That big, open heart.” Klaus found Dave’s dog tags beneath Diego’s shirt, twisted the two together, binding fabric to metal. Had it been within Klaus’ power, he would’ve forced his ribs to open up and accept them, keep them both safe and stowed where no one would be able to get to them. “In the medic’s tent, after I was shot, he recited—“

Diego’s head snapping up from where he’d been considering his clenched hands jarred Klaus’ sight back to clarity. “You were shot?”

A loose wave, a looser shrug, before Klaus admitted, “A graze. Nasty, maybe, and it did scar, but…It was my fault. Wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t turned around. Gone back. By the time I got there Murph was hanging on by his nails, more in than out of one of the VC’s holes.”

“You got him out?”

“Almost didn’t. My hand was too slick, you know? Mud and blood, let me tell you, lube’s got nothing on ‘em. But then Dave was there, and Wash.” Klaus smiled, recalling Diego’s expression—the touch of a rising blush on the cut line of his cheeks—when Klaus had thrown open the door singing about his kind of man. “That song we danced to the other night? Wash hummed it in his sleep. I guess his girl back home was a fan of the band. All of her letters opened with lines from their songs.”

Klaus finished off the glass of water, left it on the floor when he stood, went to join Diego on the bed. “Silly of me, but I wrote you a letter.”

“Yeah?” Diego’s gaze roamed Klaus’ face. Every place his dark eyes lingered, Klaus felt it like a kiss, like skin on skin. “What’d it say?”

“Oh, the usual. It rained that day. The MCIs they gave us were atrocious, if you could please send real food, and socks. It said that because of Dave I was okay, maybe a lot better than okay.” Klaus lifted Diego’s hand from the mattress, held it on his lap. With his thumb, Klaus worshipped the scars and calluses that were, each and every one, a testament to Diego’s strength and stubbornness. His unwavering determination. A visual representation of a devotion that ran so deep, Klaus doubted Diego himself knew where it leveled off, where it ended. “I miss you. I wrote _that_ over and over. Once for every year after the Academy. A dozen other times for good measure.”

“If I could’ve gotten there, Klaus, I—“

“I know.” Klaus leaned against Diego’s side, twining their fingers together. “I’m glad you couldn’t.” He brought Diego’s hand up to his lips, kissed the prominent knuckle. “If I’d lost you both, if you were taken from me like—It would’ve been cruel to the others, don’t you think, not having our bodies to bury or burn.”

Diego’s eyes closed tightly, Klaus saw, while he worked to clear his throat. “Wh-when I fo-found out it was you they took, that the br-brother Patch came across in that motel room was yo-you, I—It was chance that got you out of that shit. If I’d gone there and found you bo-both, found your bo-body beside hers, I—“

Klaus sealed his lips over Diego’s, without thinking, without—His threshold for all kinds of things was labyrinthine, it really was, because he’d shoved it back, shoved it aside, made it so he wasn’t always able to find the damn thing. That was how he survived. Regardless of whether or not he wanted to. But with Diego—when it came to Diego’s pain, stuttering his speech, fracturing his voice—Klaus took one step and tripped over it, that rarely crossed, mostly absent threshold. He was never able to…he always had to—Without breaking that seal, wholly returning the hungry pressure of Diego’s response, Klaus straddled Diego’s thighs. 

“I’m here, with you,” he breathed against Diego’s lips, “and you’re with me.”

The sound Diego made before his arms tightened was indescribable. It resonated in Klaus’ chest, and shook the hand he had on Diego’s nape; it made his grip on Diego’s biceps tremble and slip to the bend of his elbow. 

Diego took Klaus’ mouth and, deepening the kiss, blended their every breath into one fathomless inhale. “Klaus,” a ragged rasp, the word broke against Klaus’ tongue, “the kids…we can’t—“

“They—“ Klaus’ answer was lost to the drag of Diego’s hands down his back. Both palms curved to cup Klaus’ ass, kneaded, firmed as Diego used that hold to set a rolling rhythm he matched with his own hips. He was… _hard_ , Klaus licked his lips, he was so—“Fucking…Christ…they’re not…not here.”

The press of their bodies so tight, so close: Klaus felt it when Diego flinched. “Wh-what? Why?”

“Ben.” Klaus altered the angle of his hips—friction, he _needed_ —to grind against Diego’s taut abdomen. “They’re with Ben.”

Diego leaned back, and Klaus wasn’t able to swallow down an appreciative moan, wasn’t able to deny the urge to touch Diego’s kiss-swollen lips, to find out if the scrape of brilliant red skin along the lush bottom curve was hot, if it would burn. In the scorching second that followed, Diego took Klaus’ finger into his mouth. Hollowed his tongue around it and sucked, bathing every inch in impossible wet heat. Diego watched Klaus’ expression flicker and unfold, his eyes dark, devouring every minute reaction. The small feral sounds Diego wrung from him, Klaus was fucking certain he’d never made a single one before, not even with a coc—

“Klaus,” Diego murmured—one syllable, thick with urgency—and Klaus was suddenly, painfully aware of his pulse, wrecked by the scent of Diego’s sweat. Aware, too, of the precome soaking into the restricting fabric of his briefs. “We’re alone?”

Klaus swallowed, barely managed to repeat, “We’re alone.”

Smoothly shifting his hands from Klaus’ ass to the backs of both legs, Diego lifted him and turned, laid Klaus out beneath him on the mattress. Dropping his head to hide a laugh, a biting kiss, in the hollow of Klaus’ throat, Diego said, “You should see your face right now.”

“I’ll procure a mirror,” Klaus breathed, panted, baring all of his throat for Diego’s mark, “if you’ll put it on the ceiling.”

“Let’s say I do, is it your face you’ll really be watching,” Diego rocked his hips and retreated, rocked back _harder_ , shoving Klaus up the mattress some, “or my ass as I move in you?”

“Th-that one.” And maybe that was the image Klaus was meant to hold onto as he met and matched Diego’s driving pace—leather against leather, whispering, groaning with every flickering pulse of their hips—but as devastating as it was, it wasn’t the same, Klaus knew it would never be as decadent, as excruciatingly beautiful as Diego’s face above him. “And you could watch mine,” tenderness crept into Klaus’ tone, lowered his voice to a confessional murmur, “as I sink down, take every slick inch, ride you.”

Diego’s inhale splintered into three breaths. His rhythm never faltered but slowed. Softly, he said, “It’s gonna be like that, huh?”

Nipping along Diego’s jaw, Klaus scraped his teeth against stubble, reveled in the shiver it induced. “Hmm?”

If Diego answered, clarified, Klaus wasn’t able to hear him over the ravenous beat of his own heart— the groans he gave up to Diego’s mouth, that he left in the strong angle of his jaw—the rasp of one inked palm over Diego’s short hair.

“Clothes,” Klaus said, when he remembered, when he realized. Rucking up Diego’s shirt, he splayed his hand over the sweat-sheened skin of Diego’s lower back. “Why the fuck are we still wearing our clothes?” Slipping a hand beneath the waistband of Diego’s pants, Klaus squeezed the firm, flexing muscle of his ass. “Why aren’t you inside me?”

“They co-could come back.” Diego lowered his head, kissed Klaus’ mouth corner to corner before he ground down on Klaus’ cock with sweet, insistent pressure. “Our first time isn’t going to happen in a rush. You’re going to come like this, I’m going to make you come like this—“

“I might just fr-from that, your voice, _fuck_ , Diego.”

Diego’s grin flashed at that, and then he put those sinful lips near Klaus’ ear and filled it with intricate, _athletic_ promises, with dirty images drenched in the purest desire, and Klaus lost track of time, of his body, both of those things pulling taut, arching, bending to Diego’s will. So eager to do his bidding. 

When he finally came, coaxed over the edge into blinding pleasure by Diego’s voice—the firm hand Diego added to the desperate slide and grind of their hips—it was with a sob, with a sigh that felt like a…a first breath. Like the beginning of something Klaus would die for, or kill for. Live for.

Languorous, riding the unfinished memory of his orgasm, Klaus reached for Diego’s—

“You already took care of me, baby.”

Klaus felt his brow pinch as he blinked up at Diego. “I did?” 

“I’m not going to ask.” Diego brushed Klaus’ lips with a soft smile, eased his weight off of Klaus to lay at his side. “I don’t want to know if anyone else has made you lose yourself like that.”

_Only Dave_ , Klaus thought, and wasn’t surprised the number was restricted to the two men he—Klaus shook his head, looked down the length of their bodies. They were going to have to get up, clean up, change into clothes that weren’t sticky with semen—“I missed it,” he whispered, every ounce of frustrated disbelief he felt coming through loud and clear. “Goddamnit, I fucking missed it.”

“What?” Diego asked, wide-eyed.

“Your face, that’s what. I wanted to watch your face when you—Did you say my name? Did you—“

“Did I say it? Klaus, I screamed it,” Diego told him in a tone that matched his expression, serious and sincere—And then his lips twitched, and it was only owing to the fact that Klaus’ heartbeat was still coming down from the natural high of his release that Diego was let off easy, with a slap to the hip Klaus had perched his hand on. “Soon as we get more time to ourselves, I promise, baby, you’ll see it. A lot.”

“You’ll be loud?”

Diego inclined his head. “I’ll be loud.” Pushing up with obvious reluctance, Diego straddled Klaus’ thighs to get a foot on the floor. “Jesus.” Gingerly stepping back from the bed, he said, “Remind me not to make a habit of coming in—“

“Listen here, buddy,” Klaus propped himself up on both elbows, “you were the one who insisted we keep them on.” He unzipped his pants, peeled the fly to either side, and gestured to the mess staining the cloth over his crotch. “This is all your doing.”

Diego grinned, wolfish. “Damn straight it is.”

Ducking the pillow chucked in his direction, the dark of Diego’s eyes lit with the same unrestrained emotion Klaus heard in his laugh. A mirroring spark, a lightness Klaus hadn’t felt since—kindled, unfurled behind his breastbone.

“You can be smug about it, Diego, when you’ve made me forget my name not just once but twice, at a bare minimum, and all in a single romp.” Flapping a hand towards the door, Klaus said, “Scurry along if you must. Change into something jizzless. Get back before our kids return, mein Liebling, unless you want me to to be the one to explain why Ben hurried them out of here?” 

Holding up a stern finger, Diego said, “Do not do that.” He shot out the door, popped his head back inside less than a second later. “I mean it, Klaus, wait for me.”

Klaus blew Diego a kiss before he stood to strip off his pants, his come-coated briefs. He found a washcloth, sniffed it, and deciding it was fine, used spit and elbow grease on his abdomen. Pulling on a pair of tight pastel pink pants, Klaus glanced over the room when he heard a deep, drawn-out growl.

His stomach snarled again, and—“Ugh. Right,” he remembered, “food.”

In the hallway, Klaus smiled—foolishly, utterly besotted—as he looked over at Diego’s closed door. Light crawled out from beneath it, swaying, yielding the floor to Diego’s feet as he moved around the room. 

Hurrying down the stairs to the kitchen, Klaus flicked the switch on the overhead light. Moved to the fridge to rustle up something for both him and Diego, to bring back to their room. There wasn’t much: a shit ton of creamer, considering Five liked to fool people into thinking his coffee was tar—or, worse, molasses—so no one touched it; three slices of lemon meringue pie, only some heathen had spooned up most of the meringue. He pushed those aside to grab—

“ _Klaus_.”

Jolting at the close proximity of the unfamiliar voice, responding on instinct to the terror throttling its pitch, Klaus scrambled out of the fridge. The plate he dropped in the process cracked into jagged pieces against the floor. “ _Sweet_  mother of  _pearl_.” With a hand to his chest, Klaus frowned down at their girl, at the desperation darkening her blue eyes, darting over Klaus' shoulder. "Sweetie, you sca—Hey, you  _spoke_. Ho—"

His airflow abruptly choked off by a large blunt hand, Klaus kicked out, bare feet skidding on smooth tile until his ass collided with the sink and he was forced to bend back over the porcelain basin.

"Was that her?" Frozen blue eyes. Lips chapped and cracked like bark split across a branch. "Were you talkin' to my girl?"

Clawing at the man's wrist, Klaus refused to look at her, refused to look away from the bastard's flushed face, the nose that was out of whack from being broken. 

Their girl—Klaus and Diego's sweet girl—darted forward. "Let him go." Klaus caught flashing glimpses of her face, contorted with fear and pain—so much pain—as she struck balled up, incorporeal hands against the man's back and side. "Let. Him. Go."

Klaus wasn't going to—he had to make her leave—he needed to get her away from—

The hand spanning Klaus' throat tightened. "I knew it, knew as soon as I read about you, your powers. Trouble. Knew you'd be trouble. Turning out your goddamn guard dogs to find me. Your fucking bloodhounds. That was a mistake." Spit slapped Klaus' cheek when the bastard leaned in, snarled, "What did my fucking kids tell you, huh, did they say I kil—"

His vision hazing, Klaus dazedly wondered when the room's mortared walls had been replaced with a tent's coarse and wrinkled canvas. And then it didn’t matter, not a bit, because Klaus saw Dave, heard his voice, watched as he demonstrated—He'd been so, so adamant, his Dave, that Klaus be able to defend himself in case someone else found out about them, confronted him again, but that was ridiculous, because Dave was—Klaus blinked, and blinked, and saw whitewashed brick, the menagerie of posters on the walls. Dave wasn't there, and Diego—His Diego wasn't going to find him on the floor, dea—Baring his teeth, Klaus slammed his glowing right hand against the man's elbow, twisting the wrist away from his throat with his left.

A sharp grunt, and the man jerked up both hands to dislodge the thin arms suddenly wrapped around his neck. Their girl held on, screamed, "Klaus, run."

Palming his throat, convulsively swallowing, wheezing without making a sound, Klaus peeled away from the sink. He managed a few hasty, uncoordinated steps before one of the plate's broken shards sliced through the heel of his foot. Klaus smelled it first, the wet metal of slippery blood— _better than lube_ —but it wasn’t until the ceiling came into focus above him that he felt it seeping between his toes. 

On his elbows, Klaus scooted towards the doorway. He’d gained precious little ground when a bone-cracking grip locked onto his ankle, hauled him back. Quickly dropping down, straddling Klaus' abdomen, the man kept him pinned with the bulk of his weight.

When the first blow landed, it bit into Klaus’ cheekbone, igniting a radiating heat beneath his skin. The second stung his lip, split skin.

“Where—"

Their girl sank her teeth into the bastard’s ear, gouged his left eye, and Klaus thought, _Diego was right_. She was a scrapper, she was the bravest, best goddamn—With a pain-choked curse, the man abruptly wrenched back. 

Blood dripped from his ear onto the blade embedded in the muscle beneath his shoulder. 

Massive arms slid beneath Klaus' armpits. He was pulled back, out of the way, as Diego stepped forward, stalking the man who'd broken into their house, who'd killed their kids. Batting at Luther, Klaus made to get to his knees, to get to Diego before—"Klaus, stop. Stop."

Furiously shaking his head, with his eyes fixed on Diego’s back, Klaus struggled to slip free of Luther's restraining hands.

"I know, Klaus, I know," Luther’s grip gentled to match his voice, “but you’d only distract him, and then he really might get hurt.”

“It’s okay now, Klaus.” Their girl knelt down, reached for his hand, still encased in a pearlescent glow. “We won’t let him hurt you any more.” She glanced over her shoulder and, like Klaus, watched as Diego's fist rose and fell, rose and fell, his knuckles painted a darkly glistening red. "Diego and me," she quietly promised, "we won't let him near you ever again."

Klaus tried to keep track, but all of Diego's blades, each seemed to vanish from its sheath, one by one by one, and Diego's body blocked wherever it was they ended up. Straightening—finally, ages after he’d arrived—Diego turned and there was blood, blood on his throat, blood on his chest like he'd been—

“It’s not his, Klaus.” Someone was hoarsely repeating _no, no, no_ , and Luther must have thought Klaus hadn’t heard him over that anguished litany, because his voice was noticeably louder when he said, “It’s not his blood.”

Diego came closer, crouched down. “Klaus, baby, look at me.”

He was, he always was, that’s what Klaus wanted to say. To tell Diego. The thought was there—that if there had ever been a time when he wasn’t looking at Diego, he couldn’t remember it—but the words didn’t follow. Wouldn’t be voiced. He touched Diego’s chest instead, flattened his palm over skin dressed in blood. If he applied enough pressure, Klaus was sure he could stop—he had to stop the bleeding.

A hand scored with calluses settled over Klaus’. “You feel that, baby? My heartbeat?”

Klaus frowned, concentrated on the insistent rhythm beneath his hand, but his own pulse was a series of detonating landmines—his ears rang and rang, it was a wonder and a small mercy he heard anything else—and his fingers were trembling, tapping Diego’s chest, tapping like a…like a heartbeat, like a trick—

“I’m fine. I’m here,” Diego said, “with you. And you’re with me. Remember?”

The effort it took to raise his head, to look away from the broad expanse of Diego’s unmarked but bloodied skin, was so very worth it when Klaus slipped into the dark of Diego’s eyes. A place so warm, so vital, the dead never dared tread there. In a thin voice, ragged around the edges, Klaus said, “I remember you promised. A lot. And loud.”

Softly, and only at one corner, Diego’s lips curled up. The hand he had covered Klaus’ with shifted, cupped Klaus’ jaw while his thumb stroked through something that smeared cool and wet over the heat still burning beneath Klaus’ skin. “There he is.” 

Klaus nodded, sluggish and slow, and let his eyes fall shut. He felt himself being taken from Luther’s arms and lifted, lifted off the floor, and rested in the knowledge that it was Diego’s shoulder beneath his throbbing cheek. 

“Don’t pass out on me yet, baby. We need to check you out, make sure—“

Klaus hummed and, replacing his hand over the unwavering beat of Diego’s heart, gave way to unconsciousness.

* * *

In terms of clothes and necessities and shit, Diego had brought a bare minimum with him to the Academy. There was his similarly small stash at the gym to fall back on, but the last few days, when it came down to deciding what to do—stick close to Klaus and the kids or head over to the boiler room to get a fucking sweater—the choice was no choice at all. Maybe he didn’t need the duffle to carry a few shirts and sweats and whatever else there was that had yet to be claimed by Klaus; he tossed it on the bed anyway.

Better to get it done while Klaus was still sleeping off everything that fucker had—Diego heard a pop, heard something tear, and looked down to find a new hole running along the seam of one of his shirts.

Inhaling long and deep, sitting on the edge of the bed, Diego pitched the shirt into his bag. With an elbow braced on either knee, he dropped his head into his hands.

“Diego?”

Another breath, shorter than the last, and Diego looked up with a smile for their girl. “Hey, sweetheart. Is Klaus—”

“No.” She moved to sit beside him. “He’s still asleep.”

Even after Diego had laid Klaus down on their bed, without a doubt still out cold, Klaus’ hands hadn’t lost their glow. The kids had remained visible to Diego, to all of his siblings as they crowded in to check on Klaus. Allison had looked at their girl’s shattered cheekbones and brutalized throat, at Little Man’s permanent grin and shredded knees, at the bloody handprints on their clothes, and it had filled her eyes, an emotion to match the distressed sound Diego knew she had only just stopped herself from making.

God knows if Luther hadn’t been in his room when Little Man manifested, hadn’t grabbed onto Diego’s elbow, the reality of all the damage the boy’s small body had sustained would have brought Diego to his knees.

On the mattress, Diego turned over his hand. An open invitation, or a silent request, there if she wanted to take him up on it. When she did, the pressure was slight and fluttering, like he was holding a thing so delicate and light the barest breeze would carry it away. 

He wasn’t ready for that, for them to go, and since they were both still around, Diego figured Klaus wasn’t either.

“Thank you for sending Little Man to me. And for what you did down there.” Gently, Diego knocked his arm against hers. “Luther and I can finally agree on there being someone more badass than me in this house.”

Their girl ducked her head—just not before Diego saw her smile light like a blaze—and shrugged. “I let Toby down,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t going to do that again. Not to him, or Klaus. Or you.” Like it was a game of connect the dots, she drew her index finger from callus to callus, from scar to scar on Diego’s fingers and palm. “Klaus wanted to know our names, before, but we couldn’t…I wanted to, but…Toby’s my brother, you probably figured that out, and I’m Cassandra, but I like Cassie.”

“It’s an honor to officially meet you, Cassie.”

Her lips momentarily pressed tight before she blurted, “Can I take it back?”

“What?” Diego asked, and he’d have to check with Klaus, ask if ghosts were capable of blushing.

“I like sweetheart.”

“You got it,” Diego winked at her, and no matter what Klaus wound up saying, she was blushing, “sweetheart.”

The room fell quiet after that, and Diego was content to wait, to give Cassie as much time as she needed to put the thoughts altering her expression into words. With her hand still in his, it came back to him, Klaus mentioning her scuffed knuckles. That she must have fought back. Diego smoothed his thumb across a couple of those abused knuckles, steering his thoughts away from the number of punches she would've had to have thrown to rough them up so bad.

Eventually, she squeezed his hand and, holding on tight, said, "You didn't like your dad."

"Nope," Diego easily agreed. "But yours? Him, I hate."

"Me too." When she rested her head against his arm, Diego leaned into it, took as much of her weight as there was to take. "He...I think maybe he never wanted us. Me and Toby. He said...but then Mom took off after he...hurt her...and..." Their girl turned her face into his arm—to hide it, Diego thought—but there was no missing the worry there. The shame that shut her eyes. "It's my fault."

"Hell no, it isn't." Hearing the anger that turned his voice into a lash, Diego took a breath, tempered his tone. "Sweetheart, there is nothing,  _nothing_ , you could have done to make what he did to you—"

"No, not...not that." Biting her lip, Cassie notched up her chin. The guilt and pain that churned the clear blue of her eyes into dark, drowning water—looking at it was like being slammed in the fucking chest, it was like the air had been violently stripped out of Diego's lungs. "He knew about your sister's book because I had it, because I made up stories about the Umbrella Academy. For Toby. I just...I wanted him to feel safe, but...that's how dad found out about Klaus. That's why he thought—And I'm sorry, Diego, I'm so sorry I—"

"What, tried to warn Klaus? You’re sorry for fighting for him like the bad brawler you are?" Diego shifted so Cassie could see his face. He wanted her to see it, needed her to know he meant every word he said. "You don't have anything to be sorry for, sweetheart. And Klaus would tell you the same. All of it, that's on one person, and he's gone. He's not hurting anyone, not ever again. So you let go of that blame you're holding onto, okay, because it's not yours."

Had she been any more solid, Cassie might've knocked him back a bit when she pitched herself into his arms. Diego felt her nod like an itch against the pulse in his throat, and held her while she shook with quiet sobs.

Her fierce grip loosened after a long moment. Pulling back, she swiped at her face to compose it. The smile she offered Diego then was small, quivering. The sweetest thing he'd maybe ever seen. "I, um, I should get back to Toby and Klaus."

Diego nodded. "I'll be there in a minute." He gestured at the bag, his pile of clothes. "Gotta finish this first."

At the door, Cassie glanced back. "Thank you, Diego. For everything."

She didn't wait for him to respond, turning in the direction of Klaus' room, where Little Man was probably still curled up beside him on the bed. 

Wanting to hurry the hell up so he could rejoin them, Diego got the rest of his clothes together, rolled them up to line the bottom of the duffle. Loud as it was in the otherwise silent room, the zipper's dragging rasp wasn't enough to drown out the choked-off noise that came from somewhere behind him. He turned to catch Klaus backing out of the room. "Klaus?"

Diego followed him out, but rather than wait or even slow down, Klaus hobbled down the hall that much faster. The bandages Vanya had carefully applied to his foot flapped on one side, no longer an intact barrier between the floor and the gash that was leaking fresh blood.

"Baby, hold up, you're—"

Klaus scurried into his room. Shut the door.

"Klaus." Diego tried the door knob, his heartbeat seizing for a second when he realized it was locked. "What's wro—"

"Just...just give me a minute."

"Okay," Diego agreed, palm to the wall, mouth near the slit between the door and its frame. “Why do you need it? Can you tell me that?”

There was no answer, not for a while, not until Diego heard the lock turn over, and the door swung open, seemingly on its own. 

“It's oh so kind of you to check on me, brother dear,” Klaus said from where he stood facing his childhood scribblings, his back to the door and Diego, "but really, truly, there's no reason for you to be here, so—"

"You're here." Diego stepped into the room, clocked the fact that, except for them, it was empty. "That's all the reason I need."

Klaus snorted, rubbed the back of his head. “Say, I don't suppose you've seen any bandages butterflying about? Perhaps a needle and some thread? The old wounds need new dressing, I'm—"

"What is this?" Diego moved up beside Klaus, searched his battered profile. "Why—"

“Oh, I don’t know, why don’t we chalk it up to the recent near-fatal strangulation and one-sided fisticuffs thing. By the by, don’t think I’m above constantly trotting _that_ out for hugs and kisses and giggles from my other siblings.” Klaus turned towards Diego wearing a smile like a sparking flare, like a warning light. “When are you leaving for that boiler room paradise of yours?”

Diego narrowed his eyes, confusion cutting a line between his eyebrows. “I’m—“

“Will you stay long enough to say goodbye? To the kids, I mean, because screw the rest of us, right? I _was_ going to ask them if they wanted to stick with u—me a little longer, a few more days at least, but if you’re in a rush to go—“

“That’s what this is about? You think I’m leaving?” Diego ducked his head when Klaus dropped his eyes. That smile of his was guttering; every breath Klaus took, Diego noted, came closer to snuffing it out completely. “You think I’m walking away from you? Now, after—”

“Well, no. You’re quite clearly standing still, Diego, honestly, what kind of—“

“Stop, please, with the—And just look at me.” Diego thought Klaus whispered something back, but then those shining green eyes lifted to his, and keeping his distance was too big of an ask. Threading his fingers through Klaus’, holding on when Klaus tried to retreat, to slip away from him, Diego swore, “I’m not. Do you hear me? Not now, not ever, not from you.”

Klaus’ breath caught. “But…a few days ago you said—“

“When did I ever say I was going?”

“After I…I ruined your pancakes, you said—“

“Was this before or after you took off and wouldn’t talk to me?”

“You were packing, just now, I saw—“

“Yeah, you did,” Diego agreed, and tightened his grip on Klaus’ anxiously tugging hand, “because the next time we’re together, the next time I make you come, I’m not leaving the room immediately after. What you saw was me getting my shit to bring it in here, to keep it here, so I don’t have to—“

“ _Oh_.” Klaus swayed, and Diego shot a glance down to the floor, to the wet ring of Klaus’ blo—A knuckle folded beneath Diego’s chin lifted his head. Klaus’ lips found his, and clung. He murmured, “I’m an idiot.”

Diego let tense muscles relax. Eliminating the inches of distance separating him from Klaus’ body, he eased his arms around that trim waist. “What’ve I always said, huh?”

Klaus’ hand found its way to Diego’s chest as they traded kiss after kiss composed not of pressure so much as breath, a whispered conversation of intent, of what was to come, later. Light it might’ve been, but after a while the contact was enough to have a bead of blood welling up against Diego’s mouth from the split through Klaus’ lip. Reluctantly, Diego broke their connection to—

“I’m clean,” Klaus quickly told him. “No infections. Nothing.”

“Okay,” Diego said, gently clearing the blood from Klaus’ bruised skin with his thumb. “So am I.”

Klaus’ eyebrows rose. “And why wouldn’t you be, Mister My Body Is A Temple?”

“I don’t know.” Diego wiped his thumb on his pants, reached for the box of bandages partially covered by a comic book Little Man—Toby—had found beneath the bed. “Why did you feel the need to tell me something I already knew?” With a steadying hand on Klaus’ elbow, Diego urged him to sit on the bed. He knelt down on the floor, took up Klaus’ foot, and carefully peeled back the strips half-sticking to skin flushed a furious red. “Or was that your way of telling me you want us to go bareback?”

“No,” Klaus shook his head, rounded the sideways motion into an emphatic nod, “yes.”

Smiling, Diego cleaned up the cut as best he could with what remained in the first aid kit Five had retrieved, covering Klaus’ heel with new bandages. “I guess if one of us is going to be without a doubt clear about something…Baby, if I ever start to think it might be nice to go somewhere else, have a place outside the Academy, you’ll know. That’s a conversation we’re gonna have, because unless you’re coming with me, I’m not going anywhere.” Diego looked up, took stock of Klaus’ wondering expression, the beautiful lines of his face. “Got it now?”

“Hmm, well, I might need to hear it again, to be reminded on occasion. When you’re fu— _Friends_ ,” Klaus pitched his voice at the door, his eyes darting in that direction warning Diego of the sudden appearance of company. “Countrymen, beloved siblings, we really need to have a talk about appropriate times to lend me your ears, eh?”

“I guess you’re feeling okay.” Allison extended a styrofoam box to Diego as he stood; Vanya offloaded a second box into his hands before he sat down beside Klaus on the bed. “We thought waffles were in order.”

Watching Luther turn circles trying to figure out where to sit, where he could possibly go in the room without crushing something beneath his oversized feet—Snickering, Diego committed the sight to memory. Once everyone else had filed in, their kids included, Luther settled on putting his back to the closed door and sliding down to the floor.

Cassie claimed the space on Diego’s right side; Toby took the spot on Klaus’ left. And Ben—Like the rest of his siblings, Diego instinctively glanced at Klaus’ hands, lighting up a styrofoam box like a lantern.

“Now that the gang’s all here,” Klaus said, “can we please dig in? As delectable as Diego’s lips are—and for the curious among you, my man serves up god tier kisses—I still need _actual_ food on occasion. It’s been a coon’s age since I last ate. I’m fam—What?” Klaus split his stare between all of the wide eyes peering back at him. “How can I have something on my face when I haven’t had a bite yet, and, follow-up, who’s in possession of the forks?”

Vanya opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “You—“

Allison blinked. “When—“

Five snorted. “How is it you people see nothing coming?” Tossing a fork to Klaus, he said, “Not one of you should have survived even a year without me. That you did defies all conceivable odds.”

Luther raised his hand. “I knew.”

“Same,” Ben said from his corner.

“Us too,” Cassie chimed in, Toby backing her up with a nod.

"Terrific. That's...terrific." Diego liberated the syrup from Klaus' hands before the entire bottle was drained over one of his waffles. “Guys, I'd like you to officially meet Cassie and Toby. Klaus and I were hoping they'd agree to stay with us a bit longer." At that, their girl's gaze shot up to his face. "If you want to move on, sweetheart, we'd understand, but—"

“No.” Cassie grabbed his forearm, said in a rush, "We'll stay."

"I've got more of those." Luther inclined his head towards the comic book spread open over Toby's lap. "If you'd like, I could show you where they are. You can read them whenever you want.”

"Do you like music?" Vanya asked. “I have a concert coming up.”

Half-listening as each of his siblings asked their kids questions or offered to show them things stashed across the house, Diego pressed back against the wall, got an arm between it and Klaus. He kissed Klaus' temple, somehow already sticky with syrup, and against the soft curls there asked, "You didn't get the ending you wanted the other day, but how's this for a beginning?"

"I'm going to assume you're not asking me if this is better than an orgasm, because, really, Diego?" Watching as Klaus glanced over the room, skipping from face to face, Diego saw his expression shift towards a measure of happiness none of them were all that familiar with, had only ever experienced in snatches at best. "Maybe," he said, curling in, getting as close as he could short of sitting on Diego's lap, "on second thought…”

**Author's Note:**

> First, thank you for reading! Please know that kudos and comments are so very welcome and appreciated. 
> 
> This is perhaps the second time I've let a story have its way entirely; I followed where it wanted to go, and to lean on a bit of understatement, it was a lovely writing experience. A joy, actually, and so I really, sincerely hope you enjoyed how it unfolded.
> 
> The title of the fic is a borrowed lyric from Khalid's "Better." And the song Klaus essentially serenades Diego with is "Come A Little Bit Closer" by Jay & the Americans. Those particular lyrics were far too apropos and I just couldn't resist.


End file.
